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Abstract Satellite observations of tropical maritime convection indicate an afternoon maximum in anvil cloud fraction that cannot be explained by the diurnal cycle of deep convection peaking at night. We use idealized cloud-resolving model simulations of single anvil cloud evolution pathways, initialized at different times of the day, to show that tropical anvil clouds formed during the day are more widespread and longer lasting than those formed at night. This diurnal difference is caused by shortwave radiative heating, which lofts and spreads anvil clouds via a mesoscale circulation that is largely absent at night, when a different, longwave-driven circulation dominates. The nighttime circulation entrains dry environmental air that erodes cloud top and shortens anvil lifetime. Increased ice nucleation in more turbulent nighttime conditions supported by the longwave cloud-top cooling and cloud-base heating dipole cannot compensate for the effect of diurnal shortwave radiative heating. Radiative–convective equilibrium simulations with a realistic diurnal cycle of insolation confirm the crucial role of shortwave heating in lofting and sustaining anvil clouds. The shortwave-driven mesoscale ascent leads to daytime anvils with larger ice crystal size, number concentration, and water content at cloud top than their nighttime counterparts. Significance Statement Deep convective activity and rainfall peak at night over the tropical oceans. However, anvil clouds that originate from the tops of deep convective clouds reach their largest extent in the afternoon hours. We study the underlying physical mechanisms that lead to this discrepancy by simulating the evolution of anvil clouds with a high-resolution model. We find that the absorption of sunlight by ice crystals lofts and spreads the daytime anvil clouds over a larger area, increasing their lifetime, changing their properties, and thus influencing their impact on climate. Our findings show that it is important not only to simulate the correct onset of deep convection but also to correctly represent anvil cloud evolution for skillful simulations of the tropical energy balance.
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Radiative Influence of Horizontally Oriented Ice Crystals over Summit, Greenland
Abstract Ice crystals commonly adopt a horizontal orientation under certain aerodynamic and electrodynamic conditions that occur in the atmosphere. While the radiative impact of horizontally oriented ice crystals (HOIC) has been theoretically studied with respect to their impact on shortwave cloud albedo, the longwave impact remains unexplored. This work analyzes the occurrence of HOIC at Summit, Greenland, from July 2015 to June 2017. Using polarization lidar and ancillary atmospheric sensors, ice crystal orientations are identified and used to interpret cloud radiative impact on the surface radiation budget. We find HOIC occur in at least 25.6% of all ice‐only column observations. We find that the shortwave impact of HOIC is to increase cloud radiative effect by approximately 22% for a given solar zenith angle. We also find that the longwave impact of HOIC compared to randomly oriented ice crystals are statistically different at the p < 0.01 significance level, increasing the surface radiative effect by approximately 8% for clouds with infrared optical depths < ~1. We suggest that the observed difference between the surface radiative effect for clouds containing randomly oriented ice crystals and HOIC may be due to enhanced scattering, but this hypothesis needs to be further explored with more detailed observations and modeling.
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- PAR ID:
- 10455476
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
- Volume:
- 124
- Issue:
- 22
- ISSN:
- 2169-897X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 12141-12156
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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