Breakout Summary Report
ARM/ASR User and PI Meeting
Improving understanding of deep convection life cycle with novel measurement and modeling approaches
23 June 2021
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
140
James Marquis and Zhe Feng
23 June 2021
11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
140
James Marquis and Zhe Feng
Breakout Description
This session aims to discuss new approaches to better integrate measurements with one another and with modeling to improve understanding of key dynamical, microphysical, and environmental interactions controlling the evolution of deep convection. Topics of discussion will include advantages, disadvantages, uncertainties, and needs for retrievals and measurement networks, and past, current, and future modeling and model-observation integration approaches.Main Discussion
Our session involved both invited and solicited talks, targeting an integrated observations-modeling analysis techniques-driven agenda. Collectively, these talks assessed unknowns and uncertainties involved with modeling and observing deep moist convective cloud microphysics, updraft dynamics, entrainment processes, and aerosol properties. Follow-up discussion focused on the use of techniques highlighted by the speakers and others for potential future research applications, particularly those that merge observations and models, or use simulations or theory to guide future observing strategies.View the full main discussion here.
Key Findings
N/AIssues
N/ANeeds
Multiple attendees recognized a strong need for in-cloud microphysical and in/near-cloud thermodynamic observations. Abandoned efforts on a deep cumulus-penetrating aircraft were mentioned as being particularly disappointing, with a sentiment that substantive advances in deep convection science are inhibited by a lack of this capability. Penetrations targeting typical tropical oceanic deep convection, which contains weaker updrafts than land convection, with no hail and no lightning (i.e., relatively low hazard risk), as has been done by many research aircrafts, was mentioned as a more viable starting point for such in situ observations. The use of unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) was discussed as a potential tool for penetrating comparatively strong clouds and updrafts, but the discussion about actionable UAV implementation, partly on specific instrumentations and regulatory limits (e.g., maintaining line of sight on land), was inconclusive. For both activities, better coordination with surface-based remote-sensing techniques targeting cloud evolution is needed with consideration of new techniques to quantify updraft size, shape, and strength, which is poorly measured in low sample sizes currently despite its critical importance to cloud evolution.View the full needs section here.