Relationship of Cloud Water Budgets to Heating Profile Calculations

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Relationship of Cloud Water Budgets to Heating
Profile Calculations Austin and Houze 1973 Houze
et al. 1980 Houze 1982
17-19 May 2006, Seattle
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Austin and Houze 1973 Houze et al.
1980 PREMISE Measure rain amount as a function
of radar Echo Heights --gt Large-scale Mass
Transport Profile (aka LH)
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Houze 1982 PREMISE Can also relate eddy
radiative heating profiles to water budget to
obtain latent eddy radiative heating
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Tropical MCSs inject lots of hydrometeors into
upper troposphere
Idealized life cycle of tropical MCS as proposed
by Houze 1982
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Contributions to Total Heating by Convective
Cloud System
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These combine to give top-heavy heating profile
Houze 1982 idealized case
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Think of the following schematic as a composite
of the water budget of an MCS over its whole life
cycle
Ac
As
After Houze et al. (1980)
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Ac
Stratiform water budget equation
Rain not simply related to condensation
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Water budget parameters could be measured
Cloud radar ? As Precip radar ? Rs Doppler
soundings ? As, Csu, CT
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Ac
Convective region water budget equation
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Ac
For each height category i
Sum over all cloud height categories i
with the constraint
(each height cat.)
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?ZAC

Ac


?ZAS

?XAC
?XAC
Dimensions and hydrometeor content of anvils are
determined by the cloud dynamics and are related
to the radiative heating profiles
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Summary

• Latent, eddy, and radiative heating are
  interrelated through the water budget of the
  precipitating cloud system.
• Profiles of latent heating estimated by spectral
  methods are not independent of eddy and radiative
  heating profiles.
• Water budget parameters can be used to establish
  the internal consistency of latent eddy and
  radiative heating profiles.

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Thank you!
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Extra Slides
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In TWP-ICE we are subdividing the anvil into
mixed and ice anvils
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Example from TWP-ICE
Precipitation Radar
Cloud Radar
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TWP-ICE Precipitation Radar Rain Rate (20
stratiform)
Longer-term records of the water budget
parameters also are being derived. Figures here
are for duration of TWP-ICE.
This will also be done for a longer-term
climatology. We will use cloud precipitation
radars permanently located at Darwin.
TWP-ICE Cloud Radar Anvil Frequency
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Could use empirically derived water budget
parameters b and es, to estimate the stratiform
regions anvil mass proportional to the SF rain
As (bRs)/es
For example
Looking at it the other way around Whatever
latent heating budget is derived from the TRMM
precip info must be internally consistent with
the radiative heating profiles