Breakout Summary Report
ARM/ASR User and PI Meeting
2 - 6 May 2016
GoAmazon2014/5 – Clouds, precipitation, and organized convection
2 May 2016
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
0
Zhe Feng, Luiz Machado
2 May 2016
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
0
Zhe Feng, Luiz Machado
Breakout Description
The purpose of this breakout session is to facilitate discussion on how to better make use of the recently completed GoAmazon observations and ongoing modeling activities to address some of the relevant science challenges outlined by the recent ASR Workshop on Convection held at PNNL. Some of the science questions include:• Relevant processes leading to organized convection through a seamless sequence, manifested as the diurnal cycle
• Observations and understanding of convective dynamics, microphysics, and their interaction
• Sources of low predictability skill of precipitation and convection in climate models
• Advances and challenges in cloud permitting model in simulating organized deep convection
Main Discussion
Diurnal cycle of convection and contrast between wet and dry season in cloud characteristics and large-scale environments are the common theme in current research efforts. Model performance and evaluation are presented for both global model with parameterized and explicit convection (Rong Fu) and regional model with explicit convection (Zhe Feng), where observations from sounding, cloud, and precipitation are most useful in such efforts. The presentations showcased some unique emerging science and data sets from the field campaign related to convection:• Shallow-to-deep convection transition and influence from mid-tropospheric moisture (Rong Fu, Mike Jensen, Virendra Ghate)
• Urban pollution invigoration on convection (Jiwen Fan) and deforestation effect on clouds and precipitation (Luiz Machado)
• Radar wind profiler convective vertical velocity and mass flux data set (Scott Giangrande)
• ARM Variational Analysis Forcing data set for GoAmazon (Shuaiqi Tang)
Key Findings
The main outcome of the breakout is that individual PIs’ current research efforts are presented, natural collaborations with similar foci are being established, and available and upcoming data sets produced by PIs are advertised to the broader ASR community.Issues
Not applicable.Needs
Continue collaboration between U.S. and Brazilian colleagues (lead by Luiz Machado) in exchanging data sets, analysis, and science findings is essential and frequent communications need to be maintained.The vertical velocity retrieved from AMF radar wind profiler showed unique and interesting features to help understand the relationship between large-scale thermodynamics and convective dynamics, and the transition from shallow to deep convection. Both topics have been identified as important challenges in the recent ASR Convection Research workshop. A longer data set would be very important to allow separation among the different event characteristics such as cloud type, cloud system scale, aerosol loading, etc. To that end, the Amazonian Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) provides an opportunity to install a relatively inexpensive radar wind profiler system in synergy with existing surface flux measurements for a longer time period.