Status: this preprint was under review for the journal ACP but the revision was not accepted.
Tropical, oceanic, deep convective cloud morphology as observed by CloudSat
M. R. Igeland S. C. van den Heever
Abstract. An investigation into the physical shape and size of mature, oceanic, tropical, deep convective clouds is conducted. A previously developed CloudSat data-partitioning methodology is used that separates components of cloud objects and measures their various length scales. In particular, the cloud objects are divided into a lower "pedestal" region on which the upper-level "anvil" region sits. Mean cloud objects are discussed in the framework of this morphological partitioning. For single-core clouds, the mean cloud has an anvil width of 95 km, a pedestal width of 11 km, and an anvil thickness of 6.4 km. The number of identified convective cores within the pedestal correlates positively with certain cloud length scales and morphological attributes of cloud objects such as anvil width. As the number of cores increases, the width of cloud objects is observed to grow. Pedestal width is shown to regress linearly to anvil width when a 2/3rd power scaling is applied to pedestal width. This result implies a decrease in the anvil width to pedestal width ratio with growing pedestals and an equivalence between the mass convected through the pedestal top and that into the anvil. Taller clouds are found to be wider. Some of the results obtained using the CloudSat methodology are also examined with a large-domain radiative-convective equilibrium numerical simulation and are found to exhibit similar trends when modeled. Finally, various CloudSat sampling issues are discussed in several appendices.
Received: 07 Apr 2015 – Discussion started: 12 Jun 2015
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Presented in this paper are further results from a recently developed CloudSat tropical deep convective cloud database first detailed in Igel et al (2014). Length scales of the "average" mature tropical deep convective cloud are discussed. These scales are then used to provide insight into the relationship between the upper and lower regions of the cloud. The width of cloud anvil is shown to grow proportionally slower than the width of the rest of the cloud.
Presented in this paper are further results from a recently developed CloudSat tropical deep...
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