Contact: Mark Miller, Minghua Zhang
This thematic research topic focuses on low cloud processes that occur at temperatures generally above freezing, including cumulus, stratocumulus, and stratus clouds. Research encompasses clouds in tropical, marine, coastal, and continental locations. Many processes are important in these clouds including turbulence, entrainment, the evolution of drop size distribution, drizzle and precipitation formation, interactions with surface fluxes and thermodynamic profiles, and multi-scale interactions.
Current Cases Studies:

  1. Tropical Shallow Convection (Chidong Zhang): AMIE/Gan and Manus
    • 1-15 November 2011, Warm low clouds in convectively inactive period
  2. Marine and Coastal Stratocumulus (Mark Miller): CAP-MBL Case studies
    • 11 Nov 2009 (closed cell case) & 30 Aug 2010 (open cell case)
  3. Continental Low Clouds (Minghua Zhang): RACORO-FASTER Case studies