Identification

Title

The impact of rimed ice hydrometeors on global and regional climate

Abstract

Rimed hydrometeors (graupel or hail) are added to a stratiform cloud scheme for global models and tested in a variety of configurations. Off‐line tests compare well to other cloud microphysics schemes with rimed ice used in mesoscale models. Tests in single column and climate mode show expected production of small amounts of rimed ice in the middle troposphere and at high latitudes. The overall climate impacts of rimed ice (hail or graupel) at 100‐km horizontal grid spacing are small. There are some changes to partitioning between cloud ice and snow that affect upper troposphere water budgets and clouds. High‐resolution simulations are conducted with a global but regionally refined grid at 14 km over the Contiguous United States. High‐resolution simulations show local production of graupel with realistic size and number concentrations. The maximum graupel frequency at high resolution is over Western U.S. mountain ranges. Differences in total precipitation with the addition of rimed ice in 8‐year simulations are statistically significant only for orographic precipitation over the Cascade and Rocky mountains, reducing model biases when rimed ice is included. Rimed ice slightly improves summer precipitation intensity relative to observations. Thus, while the global climate impact of rimed ice in stratiform clouds may be negligible, there are potentially important and systematic regional effects, particularly for orographic precipitation. Rimed ice in cumulus clouds is not yet treated but is an important next step.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7h41v4p

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

2019-06-06T00:00:00Z

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