Latent heating profiles retrieved from measurements of ARM observation suite during MC3E
Authors
Qilong Min — State University of New York, Albany
Rui Li — State University of New York, Albany
Scott Giangrande — Brookhaven National Laboratory
Tami Fairless — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Xiaoqing Wu — Iowa State University
Category
Vertical Velocity
Description
Latent heating (LH) released by precipitation plays a vital role in the hydrologic and energy cycle in the Earth climate system. We have developed a physics-based algorithm to retrieve LH profile from measurements of cloud water, precipitation rate, and vertical velocity profiles from ARM observation suite. We applied this algorithm to the MC3E field campaign precipitation cases. The LH varied substantially from the drizzle regime, to the weak and strong convective rain regimes, and to the trailing statiform and decaying stratiform rain regimes. The LH in the convection core is positive through the entire column, while the LH in trailing stratiform rain is featured by positive heating at upper layers and negative cooling at lower layers. More interesting, the strong convective rain has the maximum of LH at about 2 km while the weak convective rain has the maximum of LH at a higher altitude. The decaying process in the stratiform rain reduced the positive LH at the higher layers and strengthened the cooling at the lower layers. The retrieved latent heating rate profiles provide useful diagnostic data for understanding dynamical and microphysical processes, and ultimately validation data for model-based analyses of large-scale heating distributions.
