Identification

Title

Effects of cloud microphysics on monsoon convection and its environments over the South China Sea: A two-dimensional cloud-resolving modeling stud

Abstract

The Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model imposed by the large-scale advective forcing derived from observed data representing an average of gridded data fields over the South China Sea Monsoon Experiment (SCSMEX) was used to study the effects of cloud microphysics on monsoon convective systems and its formation environment over the tropical ocean. The temporal variation of the WRF model-simulated rain rate is in good agreement with the observed data. The sensitivity experiments with ice runs and ice-free runs show that the ice run can produce less rain prior to and during the onset of the monsoon period: the mean decrease can be −5 mm d−1 and the maximum decrease can be more than 60 mm d−1 during the post onset of the monsoon period, and about 6% decrease of the domain-averaged accumulative rainfall. The mechanism that induces this phenomenon was investigated through the budget of cloud radiation forcing, the variations of latent heating and cooling, and that of terminal fall velocities of cloud hydrometeors due to phase change in this paper, and show that at the top of atmosphere the net cloud radiation forcing on both ice cloud and water cloud can be neglected. However, on the ocean surface the ice run may reduce about 14% of downward shortwave radiation and increase about 1.6% of downward longwave radiation on average, which can produce a net cooling process and directly reduce the sensible and latent heat fluxes on the ocean surface and result in the decrease of precipitation over the whole region. Therefore, the effect of ice microphysics is dominated through the radiation processes instead of microphysics itself. In addition, ice cloud can lead to the atmosphere being warmer and drier at middle and upper levels and stabilize the atmosphere and suppress the further development of convections.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7k075kr

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

2011-04-14T00:00:00Z

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