The Climatological Effects of Convective Cloud Systems

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This is a three-year study of convective cloud systems, with emphasis on their interaction with large-scale circulations and their effects on the Earth's radiation budget. The cloud types to be studied include cumulus clouds and also the stratiform anvil clouds and cirrus clouds that are associated with convective cloud systems The key problems to be addressed are: 1. What is the nature of the physical couplings between upper- tropospheric stratiform anvil and cirrus clouds and deep cumulus convection, and how do the clouds and convection interact with the large-scale circulation?, 2. How can the radiative effects of convective cloud systems be determine when the cloudiness fluctuates significantly on unresolved scales?, 3. What are the statistics of convective cloud systems in the tropics, and what are the spatial distributions of the resulting radiative and latent heating that drive the large-scale circulation? The proposed research will address these problems through: 1. analysis of recent observational results; 2. theoretical studies of the relations among cloud water (or ice), cloud amount, and cloud optical properties; 3. high-resolution numerical simulations of mesoscale convective systems and the associated upper level cloudiness; 4. synthesis of results in the form of a new parameterization of convective cloud systems; and 5. analysis of the results of GCM simulations of the interactions of convective cloud systems with large-scale circulations produced by this new parameterization.