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A statistical approach to the life cycle analysis of cumulus clouds selected in a virtual reality environment. Eric Griffith Frits Post Michal Koutek. Harm Jonker Harry Van den Akker. Thijs Heus (thijs.heus@zmaw.de). J. Geophys. Res. 2009. Life cycle of cumulus clouds.
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A statistical approach to the life cycle analysis of cumulus cloudsselected in a virtual reality environment Eric Griffith Frits Post Michal Koutek Harm Jonker Harry Van den Akker Thijs Heus (thijs.heus@zmaw.de) J. Geophys. Res. 2009
Life cycle of cumulus clouds • Life cycle effects are often a bias in statistics • Not that much observational time-dependent data present; how can we be even sure that the definition of non-decaying clouds in airplane observations is correct? • LES should be perfect tool with complete datasets: Select a large number of clouds to analyze in time, e.g. conditional sampling over life stage. 2
Pulsating growth • Observed in reality and/or models by Malkus(1952), Grinnel(1996), French(1999), Blyth(2005), Zhao & Austin (2005),… • All are studies on limited amount of clouds • Why does this pulsating growth happen anyway? 8
Cloud Selection • Create 4D, high-res data sets in DALES • Visualize in Virtual Reality (thanks to Eric Griffith et. al.) • 35 exemplary clouds from BOMEX, plus quite some from other cases selected => Possibility of statistics 9
tp = 408s Cloud properties in height and time 11
W versus t/z • Inside the cloud Around the cloud 12
The composite pulse • The pulse is the building block of the cloud • A pulse is defined here as the distance between 2 minima in liquid water at 800m • The average lifetime of a pulse tp=408s • Composition over 140 pulses 16
Mass flux and Lateral entrainment The buoyancy precedes the massflux, that precedes the horizontal divergence 20
Ye Olde Cloud top/lateral mixing controversy 21 Heus et al., JAS 2008
Conclusions • Pulse based statistics capture much more of the cloud dynamics than cloud based statistics • Pulses are independent of subcloud and mesoscale, but due to massive entrainment below the ascending pulse top • The APT creates a detrainment/entrainment pattern that may resemble cloud top entrainment for the first pulse, but is effectively lateral mixing after this initial phase 25