[1] While cumulus congestus as an important mode of tropical convection has been established, many of the previous studies that rely on radar observations usually capture them as snapshots. A logical question to consider is: are the statistics gathered from snapshot observations of cumulus congestus really reflective of this mode of convection that ceases its growth at these intermediate levels...

This paper uses published work to demonstrate the link between surface moisture and heat fluxes and cumulus convective rainfall. The Earth’s surface role with respect to the surface energy and moisture budgets is examined. Changes in land-surface properties are shown to influence the heat and moisture fluxes within the planetary boundary layer, convective available potential energy, and other m...

cumulus convection, as a meso-scale phenomenon, results in the release of latent heat and vertical drift of energy that by part could affect the large scale field of energy, humidity, and momentum of the atmosphere. since the current numerical models are unable to resolve the singular cumulus convective clouds that are important from a meteorological point of view, it is used to apply some sort...

In this paper, an idealized, high-resolution simulation of a gradually forced transition from shallow, nonprecipitating to deep, precipitating cumulus convection is described; how the cloud and transport statistics evolve as the convection deepens is explored; and the collected statistics are used to evaluate assumptions in current cumulus schemes. The statistical analysis methodologies that ar...

The fine-scale structure and dynamics of cumulus, evolving from shallow to deep convection, and the accompanying changes in the environment and boundary layer over mountainous terrain were the subjects of a field campaign in July-August 2006. Few measurements exist of the transport of boundary-layer air into the deep troposphere by the orographic toroidal circulation and orographic convection. ...

This study identifies the precursor signals of convective initiation within sequences of 1-km-resolution visible (VIS) and 4–8-km infrared (IR) imagery from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) instrument. Convective initiation (CI) is defined for this study as the first detection of Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) reflectivities 35 dBZ produced by conv...

This paper prototypes a method for calibrating a cumulus parameterization against a cumulus ensemble model. The key to this technique is to run the cumulus model and the parameterization in identical test cells which provide forcing typical of that seen over tropical oceans. In particular, the mean temperature pro le is relaxed to a reference pro le which is assumed to be characteristic of the ...

Accurate predictions of cloud and precipitation processes in the marine boundary layer are critical to U.S. Navy operations, as well as being more broadly important to improving seasonable predictability and the performance of NWP models. The major goal of the project is to develop and test state-of-theart boundary layer and microphysical parameterizations in order to better represent the conti...

Climatically important low-level clouds are commonly misrepresented in climate models. The FAst-physics System TEstbed and Research (FASTER) Project has constructed case studies from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility’s Southern Great Plain site during the RACORO aircraft campaign to facilitate research on model representation of boundary-layer clouds. This paper fo...

Data collected around the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona as part of the Cumulus Photogrammetric, In Situ and Doppler Observations (CuPIDO) experiment during the 2006 summer monsoon season are used to investigate the effect of soil moisture on the surface energy balance, boundary layer (BL) characteristics, thermally forced orographic circulations, and orographic cumulus convection. An unus...