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Tropical convection that overshoots the cold point tropopause can impact the climate by directly influencing water vapor, temperatures, and thin cirrus in the upper troposphere‐lower stratosphere (UTLS) region. The distribution of cold point overshoots between land and ocean may help determine how the overshoots will affect the UTLS in a changing climate. Using 4 years of satellite and reanalysis data, we test a brightness temperature proxy calibrated by radar/lidar data to identify cold point‐overshooting convection across the global tropics. We find evidence of cold point‐overshooting convection throughout the tropics, though other cirrus above the cold point cover an area 100 times larger than overshooting tops. Cold point‐overshooting convection occurs 30%–40% more often over convectively active land areas than over the warmest oceans. This proxy can be generalized to evaluate the fidelity of cold point overshoots simulated by storm‐resolving models.

 

Abstract. The tropical tropopause layer (TTL) is a sea of vertical motions. Convectively generated gravity waves create vertical winds on scales of a few to thousands of kilometers as they propagate in a stable atmosphere. Turbulence from gravity wave breaking, radiatively driven convection, and Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities stirs up the TTL on the kilometer scale. TTL cirrus clouds, which moderate the water vapor concentration in the TTL and stratosphere, form in the cold phases of large-scale (> 100 km) wave activity. It has been proposed in several modeling studies that small-scale (< 100 km) vertical motions control the ice crystal number concentration and the dehydration efficiency of TTL cirrus clouds. Here, we present the first observational evidence for this. High-rate vertical winds measured by aircraft are a valuable and underutilized tool for constraining small-scale TTL vertical wind variability, examining its impacts on TTL cirrus clouds, and evaluating atmospheric models. We use 20 Hz data from five National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) campaigns to quantify small-scale vertical wind variability in the TTL and to see how it varies with ice water content, distance from deep convective cores, and height in the TTL. We find that 1 Hz vertical winds are well represented by a normal distribution, with a standard deviation of 0.2–0.4 m s−1. Consistent with a previous observational study that analyzed two out of the five aircraft campaigns that we analyze here, we find that turbulence is enhanced over the tropical west Pacific and within 100 km of convection and is most common in the lower TTL (14–15.5 km), closer to deep convection, and in the upper TTL (15.5–17 km), further from deep convection. An algorithm to classify turbulence and long-wavelength (5 km < λ < 100 km) and short-wavelength (λ < 5 km) gravity wave activity during level flight legs is applied to data from the Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment (ATTREX). The most commonly sampled conditions are (1) a quiescent atmosphere with negligible small-scale vertical wind variability, (2) long-wavelength gravity wave activity (LW GWA), and (3) LW GWA with turbulence. Turbulence rarely occurs in the absence of gravity wave activity. Cirrus clouds with ice crystal number concentrations exceeding 20 L−1 and ice water content exceeding 1 mg m−3 are rare in a quiescent atmosphere but about 20 times more likely when there is gravity wave activity and 50 times more likely when there is also turbulence, confirming the results of the aforementioned modeling studies. Our observational analysis shows that small-scale gravity waves strongly influence the ice crystal number concentration and ice water content within TTL cirrus clouds. Global storm-resolving models have recently been run with horizontal grid spacing between 1 and 10 km, which is sufficient to resolve some small-scale gravity wave activity. We evaluate simulated vertical wind spectra (10–100 km) from four global storm-resolving simulations that have horizontal grid spacing of 3–5 km with aircraft observations from ATTREX. We find that all four models have too little resolved vertical wind at horizontal wavelengths between 10 and 100 km and thus too little small-scale gravity wave activity, although the bias is much less pronounced in global SAM than in the other models. We expect that deficient small-scale gravity wave activity significantly limits the realism of simulated ice microphysics in these models and that improved representation requires moving to finer horizontal and vertical grid spacing. 

High‐Resolution Multi‐scale Modeling Frameworks (HR)—global climate models that embed separate, convection‐resolving models with high enough resolution to resolve boundary layer eddies—have exciting potential for investigating low cloud feedback dynamics due to reduced parameterization and ability for multidecadal throughput on modern computing hardware. However low clouds in past HR have suffered a stubborn problem of over‐entrainment due to an uncontrolled source of mixing across the marine subtropical inversion manifesting as stratocumulus dim biases in present‐day climate, limiting their scientific utility. We report new results showing that this over‐entrainment can be partly offset by using hyperviscosity and cloud droplet sedimentation. Hyperviscosity damps small‐scale momentum fluctuations associated with the formulation of the momentum solver of the embedded large eddy simulation. By considering the sedimentation process adjacent to default one‐moment microphysics in HR, condensed phase particles can be removed from the entrainment zone, which further reduces entrainment efficiency. The result is an HR that can produce more low clouds with a higher liquid water path and a reduced stratocumulus dim bias. Associated improvements in the explicitly simulated sub‐cloud eddy spectrum are observed. We report these sensitivities in multi‐week tests and then explore their operational potential alongside microphysical retuning in decadal simulations at operational 1.5° exterior resolution. The result is a new HR having desired improvements in the baseline present‐day low cloud climatology, and a reduced global mean bias and root mean squared error of absorbed shortwave radiation. We suggest it should be promising for examining low cloud feedbacks with minimal approximation.

 

Abstract The goal of this study is to challenge a large eddy simulation model with a range of observations from a modern field campaign and to develop case studies useful to other modelers. The 2015 Cloud System Evolution in the Trades (CSET) field campaign provided a wealth of in situ and remote sensing observations of subtropical cloud transitions in the summertime Northeast Pacific. Two Lagrangian case studies based on these observations are used to validate the thermodynamic, radiative and microphysical properties of large eddy simulations (LES) of the stratocumulus to cumulus transition. The two cases contrast a relatively fast cloud transition in a clean, initially well-mixed boundary layer vs. a slower transition in an initially decoupled boundary layer with higher aerosol concentrations and stronger mean subsidence. For each case, simulations of two neighboring trajectories sample mesoscale variability and the coherence of the transition in adjacent air masses. In both cases, LES broadly reproduce satellite and aircraft observations of the transition. Simulations of the first case match observations more closely than for the second case, where simulations underestimate cloud cover early in the simulations and overestimate cloud top height later. For the first case, simulated cloud fraction and liquid water path increase if a larger cloud droplet number concentration is prescribed. In the second case, precipitation onset and inversion cloud breakup occurs earlier when the LES domain is chosen large enough to support strong mesoscale organization. 

Abstract Neural networks are a promising technique for parameterizing subgrid-scale physics (e.g., moist atmospheric convection) in coarse-resolution climate models, but their lack of interpretability and reliability prevents widespread adoption. For instance, it is not fully understood why neural network parameterizations often cause dramatic instability when coupled to atmospheric fluid dynamics. This paper introduces tools for interpreting their behavior that are customized to the parameterization task. First, we assess the nonlinear sensitivity of a neural network to lower-tropospheric stability and the midtropospheric moisture, two widely studied controls of moist convection. Second, we couple the linearized response functions of these neural networks to simplified gravity wave dynamics, and analytically diagnose the corresponding phase speeds, growth rates, wavelengths, and spatial structures. To demonstrate their versatility, these techniques are tested on two sets of neural networks, one trained with a superparameterized version of the Community Atmosphere Model (SPCAM) and the second with a near-global cloud-resolving model (GCRM). Even though the SPCAM simulation has a warmer climate than the cloud-resolving model, both neural networks predict stronger heating/drying in moist and unstable environments, which is consistent with observations. Moreover, the spectral analysis can predict that instability occurs when GCMs are coupled to networks that support gravity waves that are unstable and have phase speeds larger than 5 m s −1 . In contrast, standing unstable modes do not cause catastrophic instability. Using these tools, differences between the SPCAM-trained versus GCRM-trained neural networks are analyzed, and strategies to incrementally improve both of their coupled online performance unveiled. 

The extension of a cloud‐resolving model, the System for Atmospheric Modeling (SAM), to global domains is described. The resulting global model, gSAM, is formulated on a latitude‐longitude grid. It uses an anelastic dynamical core with a single reference profile (as in SAM), but its governing equations differ somewhat from other anelastic models. For quasihydrostatic flows, they are isomorphic to the primitive equations (PE) in pressure coordinates but with the globally uniform reference pressure playing the role of actual pressure. As a result, gSAM can exactly maintain steady zonally symmetric baroclinic flows that have been specified in pressure coordinates, produces accurate simulations when initialized or nudged with global reanalyses, and has a natural energy conservation equation despite the drawbacks of using the anelastic system to model global scales. gSAM employs a novel treatment of topography using a type of immersed boundary method, the Quasi‐Solid Body Method, where the instantaneous flow velocity is forced to stagnate in grid cells inside a prescribed terrain. The results of several standard tests designed to evaluate the accuracy of global models with and without topography as well as results from real Earth simulations are presented.

 

Abstract Tropical cyclogenesis (TCG) is a multiscale process that involves interactions between large-scale circulation and small-scale convection. A near-global aquaplanet cloud-resolving model (NGAqua) with 4-km horizontal grid spacing that produces tropical cyclones (TCs) is used to investigate TCG and its predictability. This study analyzes an ensemble of three 20-day NGAqua simulations, with initial white-noise perturbations of low-level humidity. TCs develop spontaneously from the northern edge of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), where large-scale flows and tropical convection provide necessary conditions for barotropic instability. Zonal bands of positive low-level absolute vorticity organize into cyclonic vortices, some of which develop into TCs. A new algorithm is developed to track the cyclonic vortices. A vortex-following framework analysis of the low-level vorticity budget shows that vertical stretching of absolute vorticity due to convective heating contributes positively to the vorticity spinup of the TCs. A case study and composite analyses suggest that sufficient humidity is key for convective development. TCG in these three NGAqua simulations undergoes the same series of interactions. The locations of cyclonic vortices are broadly predetermined by planetary-scale circulation and humidity patterns associated with ITCZ breakdown, which are predictable up to 10 days. Whether and when the cyclonic vortices become TCs depend on the somewhat more random feedback between convection and vorticity. 

We design a new strategy to load‐balance high‐intensity sub‐grid atmospheric physics calculations restricted to a small fraction of a global climate simulation's domain. We show why the current parallel load balancing infrastructure of Community Earth System Model (CESM) and Energy Exascale Earth Model (E3SM) cannot efficiently handle this scenario at large core counts. As an example, we study an unusual configuration of the E3SM Multiscale Modeling Framework (MMF) that embeds a binary mixture of two separate cloud‐resolving model grid structures that is attractive for low cloud feedback studies. Less than a third of the planet uses high‐resolution (MMF‐HR; sub‐km horizontal grid spacing) relative to standard low‐resolution (MMF‐LR) cloud superparameterization elsewhere. To enable MMF runs with Multi‐Domain cloud resolving models (CRMs), our load balancing theory predicts the most efficient computational scale as a function of the high‐intensity work's relative overhead and its fractional coverage. The scheme successfully maximizes model throughput and minimizes model cost relative to precursor infrastructure, effectively by devoting the vast majority of the processor pool to operate on the few high‐intensity (and rate‐limiting) high‐resolution (HR) grid columns. Two examples prove the concept, showing that minor artifacts can be introduced near the HR/low‐resolution CRM grid transition boundary on idealized aquaplanets, but are minimal in operationally relevant real‐geography settings. As intended, within the high (low) resolution area, our Multi‐Domain CRM simulations exhibit cloud fraction and shortwave reflection convergent to standard baseline tests that use globally homogenous MMF‐LR and MMF‐HR. We suggest this approach can open up a range of creative multi‐resolution climate experiments without requiring unduly large allocations of computational resources.

 

The structure of mesoscale cellular organization in marine cloud‐topped boundary layers is found to be well characterized by using a novel compositing approach based on mesoscale variations in the column water vapor path (WVP). The approach is applied to ground‐based observations from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Eastern North Atlantic site. Based on a set of satellite and ground‐based observational criteria, 381 hr of closed‐cell and 227 hr of open‐cell cases were selected from late 2015 to early 2018. Strong correlations are found between mesoscale‐filtered cloud properties and WVP for both closed‐cell and open‐cell regimes. In the moist atmospheric columns, the clouds are thicker with higher tops and lower bases, and stronger precipitation compared to that in the dry columns. Overall, cloud properties of open and closed cells covary similarly with mesoscale moisture perturbations, except that the correlation of liquid water path with WVP is much weaker for open cells. The relations of subcloud properties with WVP are also examined. In the moist columns, surface equivalent potential temperature and relative humidity are higher than in the dry columns. A marginally negative correlation between mesoscale‐filtered subcloud turbulence eddy dissipation rate and WVP is found for closed cells. These results are consistent with the conceptual model of closed cellular mesoscale circulations of Zhou and Bretherton (2019).