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Abstract This study describes a new mechanism governing the diurnal variation of vertical motion in tropical oceanic heavy rainfall zones, such as the intertropical convergence zone. In such regions, the diurnal heating of widespread anvil clouds due to shortwave radiative absorption enhances upward motion in these upper layers in the afternoon. This radiatively driven ascent promotes an afternoon maximum of anvil clouds, indicating a diurnal cloud‐radiative feedback. The opposite occurs at nighttime: While rainfall exhibits a dominant peak at night‐early morning, the boundary layer rooted upward motion and latent heating tied to this peak are forced to be more bottom heavy by the nighttime anomalous radiative cooling at upper levels. This mechanism therefore favors the stratiform top‐heavy heating mode during daytime and suppresses it nocturnally. These diurnal circulation signatures arise from microphysical‐radiative feedbacks that manifest on the scales of organized deep convection, which may ultimately impact the daily mean radiation budget. 

Abstract Observations of the diurnal cycle in tropical cyclones (TCs) systematically indicate a ∼12‐hr offset between peak rainfall rate and the maximum height of anvil clouds in the TC cloud canopy. This phasing conflicts with archetypal models of organized deep convection, which suggest a tight coupling between rainfall, vertical cloud growth, and anvil clouds. We show that this phasing owes to the bimodal diurnal evolution of the transverse circulation, which peaks nocturnally from low–midlevels, and during daytime in the upper troposphere. The bottom‐heavy nocturnal circulation state is driven by latent heating from nocturnally invigorated deep convection, while the top‐heavy daytime state is the thermally direct circulation response to strong shortwave‐cloud warming in the optically thick TC cloud canopy. This daytime upper‐level circulation response manifests in a lifting of the maximum height of the TC outflow and, in turn, a lifting and invigoration of the upper‐level anvil clouds of the TC cloud canopy.