Identification

Title

Influences of subsidence and free‐tropospheric conditions on the nocturnal growth of nonclassical marine stratocumulus

Abstract

Effects of free-tropospheric thermodynamic properties and large-scale subsidence on the nocturnal growth of marine stratocumulus clouds are investigated through large-eddy simulation based on Flight 5 of the Physics of Stratocumulus Top research campaign. It was characterized by a weak inversion and moist troposphere. Sensitivity simulations are performed using variations in the subsidence and free-tropospheric temperature and humidity. The results confirm that the cloud-top entrainment instability parameter alone cannot unambiguously control the behaviors of marine stratocumulus due to the opposite response of liquid water path (LWP) to changes in the humidity and temperature jumps with the same variation in , thereby both jumps should be considered separately. However, sometimes it could be considered as a joint factor of the humidity and temperature jumps controlling LWP even though cloud-top entrainment instability does not occur or kappa < 0. An obvious role of subsidence is to push the inversion layer down nearly identically and at the same rate under different ambient conditions. Enhanced subsidence, as expected, diminishes the entrainment rate, cloud-top height, cloud thickness, and LWP. However, it has a small influence on the inversion thickness and the dynamic instability across the inversion. An LWP budget analysis shows that the direct effect of subsidence is a small reduction in the LWP, but the indirect effect of subsidence is large due to contributions from other physical processes. Therefore, subsidence is an important physical process controlling the LWP budget, even though its direct contribution is significantly smaller than the largest contributions from both radiation and entrainment.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ns0xws

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-11-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact