A Lagrangian perspective on the lifecycle and cloud radiative effect of deep convective clouds over Africa

The anvil clouds of tropical deep convection have large radiative effects in both the shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) spectra with the average magnitudes of both over 100 Wm-2. Despite this, due to the opposite sign of these fluxes, the net average of anvil cloud radiative effect (CRE) over the tropics has been found to be neutral. Research into the response of anvil CRE to climate change has primarily focused on the feedbacks of anvil cloud height and anvil cloud area, in particular regarding the LW feedback. However, tropical deep convection over land has a strong diurnal cycle which may couple with the shortwave component of anvil cloud radiative effect. As this diurnal cycle is poorly represented in climate models it is vital to gain a better understanding of how its changes impact anvil CRE. To study the connection between deep convective cloud (DCC) lifecycle and CRE, we investigate the behaviour of both isolated and organised DCCs in a 4-month case study over sub-Saharan Africa (May–August 2016). Using a novel cloud tracking algorithm, we detect and track growing convective cores and their associated anvil clouds using geostationary satellite observations from Meteosat SEVIRI. Retrieved cloud properties and derived broadband radiative fluxes are provided by the CC4CL algorithm. By collecting the cloud properties of the tracked DCCs, we produce a dataset of anvil cloud properties along their lifetimes. While the majority of DCCs tracked in this dataset are isolated, with only a single core, the overall coverage of anvil clouds is dominated by those of clustered, multi-core anvils due to their larger areas and lifetimes. We find that the distribution of anvil cloud CRE of our tracked DCCs has a bimodal distribution. The interaction between the lifecycles of DCCs and the diurnal cycle of insolation results in a wide range of SW anvil CRE, while the LW component remains in a comparatively narrow range of values. The CRE of individual anvil clouds varies widely, with isolated DCCs tending to have large negative or positive CREs while larger, organised systems tend to have CRE closer to zero. Despite this, we find that the net anvil cloud CRE across all tracked DCCs is indeed neutral within our range of uncertainty (0.86 ± 0.91 Wm-2). Changes in the lifecycle of DCCs, such as shifts in the time of triggering, or the length of the dissipating phase, could have large impacts on the SW anvil CRE and lead to complex responses that are not considered by theories of LW anvil CRE feedbacks

Using GOES-16 ABI data to detect convection, estimate latent heating, and initiate convection in a high resolution model

2021 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Convective-scale data assimilation has received more attention in recent years as spatial resolution of forecast models has become finer and more observation data are available at such fine scale. Significant amounts of observation data are available over the globe, but only a limited number of observations are assimilated in operational forecast models in the most effective way. One of the most important observation data for predicting precipitation is radar reflectivity from ground-based radars as it provides three-dimensional structure of precipitation. Many operational models use these data to create cloud analysis and initiate convection. In High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR), the cloud permitting operational model at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that is responsible for short term forecasts over the Contiguous United States (CONUS), latent heating is derived from ground-based radars and added in the observed convective regions to initiate convection. Even though adding heating is shown to improve forecasts of convection, this cannot be done over ocean or mountainous regions where radar data is not available. Geostationary data are available regardless of radar coverage and its data are provided in similar spatial and temporal resolution as ground-based radar. Currently, geostationary data are only used as a source of cloud top information or atmospheric motion vectors due to lack of vertical information. However, Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)-16 and -17 have high temporal resolution data that can compensate the lack of vertical information. From loops of one-minute visible images, convective clouds can be detected by finding a region with a constant bubbling. Therefore, this dissertation seeks a way to use these high temporal resolution GOES-16 data to mimic what radars do over land. In the first two papers presented in the dissertation, two methods are proposed to detect convection using one-minute GOES-16 Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) data. The first method explicitly calculates Tb decrease or lumpiness of reflectance data and finds convective regions. The second paper tries to automate this process using machine learning method. Results from both methods are comparable to radar product, but the machine learning model seems to detect more convective regions than the conventional method. In the third paper, latent heating profiles for convective clouds are estimated from GOES-16. Once a convective cloud is detected, latent heating profiles corresponding to cloud top temperature of the convective cloud is searched from the lookup table created using model simulations. This technique is similar to spaceborne radar inferred latent heating developed for National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission (GPM). Latent heating assigned from GOES-16 is shown to be similar to latent heating derived from Next-Generation Radar (NEXRAD) once they are summed up over each cloud. Finally in the last paper, latent heating estimated by using the method from the third paper are assimilated into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to examine impacts of using GOES-16 derived latent heating in initiating convection in the forecast model. Two case studies are presented to compare results using GOES-16 derived heating and NEXRAD derived heating. Results show that using GOES-16 derived heating sometimes produce deeper convection than it should, but it improves overall precipitation forecasts. This appears related to the much deeper column of heating assigned by GOES than the empirical relation used by the HRRR operational scheme. In addition, in a case when storms developed over Gulf of Mexico where radar data are not available, forecasts are improved using GOES-16 latent heating

The Role of NWP Filter for the Satellite Based Detection of Cumulonimbus Clouds

This study is motivated by the great importance of Cbs for aviation safety. The study investigates the role of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) filtering for the remote sensing of Cumulonimbus Clouds (Cbs) by implementation of about 30 different experiments, covering Central Europe. These experiments compile different stability filter settings as well as the use of different channels for the InfraRed (IR) brightness temperatures (BT). As stability filters, parameters from Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) are used. The application of the stability filters restricts the detection of Cbs to regions with a labile atmosphere. Various NWP filter settings are investigated in the experiments. The brightness temperature information results from the infrared (IR) Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Image (SEVIRI) instrument on-board of the Meteosat Second Generation satellite and enables the detection of very cold and high clouds close to the tropopause. Various satellite channels and BT thresholds are applied in the different experiments. The satellite only approaches (no NWP filtering) result in the detection of Cbs with a relative high probability of detection, but unfortunately combined with a large False Alarm Rate (FAR), leading to a Critical Success Index (CSI) below 60% for the investigated summer period in 2016. The false alarms result from other types of very cold and high clouds. It is shown that the false alarms can be significantly decreased by application of an appropriate NWP stability filter, leading to the increase of CSI to about 70% for 2016. CSI is increased from about 70 to about 75% by application of NWP filtering for the other investigated summer period in 2017. A brief review and reflection of the literature clarify that the function of the NWP filter can not be replaced by MSG IR spectroscopy. Thus, NWP filtering is strongly recommended to increase the quality of satellite based Cb detection. Further, it has been shown that the well established convective available potential energy (CAPE) and the convection index (KO) work well as a stability filter