EUREC⁴A

The science guiding the EUREC⁴A campaign and its measurements is presented. EUREC⁴A comprised roughly 5 weeks of measurements in the downstream winter trades of the North Atlantic – eastward and southeastward of Barbados. Through its ability to characterize processes operating across a wide range of scales, EUREC⁴A marked a turning point in our ability to observationally study factors influencing clouds in the trades, how they will respond to warming, and their link to other components of the earth system, such as upper-ocean processes or the life cycle of particulate matter. This characterization was made possible by thousands (2500) of sondes distributed to measure circulations on meso- (200 km) and larger (500 km) scales, roughly 400 h of flight time by four heavily instrumented research aircraft; four global-class research vessels; an advanced ground-based cloud observatory; scores of autonomous observing platforms operating in the upper ocean (nearly 10 000 profiles), lower atmosphere (continuous profiling), and along the air–sea interface; a network of water stable isotopologue measurements; targeted tasking of satellite remote sensing; and modeling with a new generation of weather and climate models. In addition to providing an outline of the novel measurements and their composition into a unified and coordinated campaign, the six distinct scientific facets that EUREC⁴A explored – from North Brazil Current rings to turbulence-induced clustering of cloud droplets and its influence on warm-rain formation – are presented along with an overview of EUREC⁴A's outreach activities, environmental impact, and guidelines for scientific practice. Track data for all platforms are standardized and accessible at https://doi.org/10.25326/165 (Stevens, 2021), and a film documenting the campaign is provided as a video supplement

EUREC⁴A

The science guiding the EUREC⁴A campaign and its measurements is presented. EUREC⁴A comprised roughly 5 weeks of measurements in the downstream winter trades of the North Atlantic – eastward and southeastward of Barbados. Through its ability to characterize processes operating across a wide range of scales, EUREC⁴A marked a turning point in our ability to observationally study factors influencing clouds in the trades, how they will respond to warming, and their link to other components of the earth system, such as upper-ocean processes or the life cycle of particulate matter. This characterization was made possible by thousands (2500) of sondes distributed to measure circulations on meso- (200 km) and larger (500 km) scales, roughly 400 h of flight time by four heavily instrumented research aircraft; four global-class research vessels; an advanced ground-based cloud observatory; scores of autonomous observing platforms operating in the upper ocean (nearly 10 000 profiles), lower atmosphere (continuous profiling), and along the air–sea interface; a network of water stable isotopologue measurements; targeted tasking of satellite remote sensing; and modeling with a new generation of weather and climate models. In addition to providing an outline of the novel measurements and their composition into a unified and coordinated campaign, the six distinct scientific facets that EUREC⁴A explored – from North Brazil Current rings to turbulence-induced clustering of cloud droplets and its influence on warm-rain formation – are presented along with an overview of EUREC⁴A's outreach activities, environmental impact, and guidelines for scientific practice. Track data for all platforms are standardized and accessible at https://doi.org/10.25326/165 (Stevens, 2021), and a film documenting the campaign is provided as a video supplement

Trade Wind Boundary Layer Turbulence and Shallow Precipitating Convection: New Insights Combining SAR Images, Satellite Brightness Temperature and Airborne In Situ Measurements

The imprint of marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) dynamical structures on sea surface roughness, as seen from Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) acquisitions, is investigated. We focus on February 13th, 2020, a case study of the EUREC4A (Elucidating the role of clouds-circulation coupling in climate) field campaign. For suppressed conditions, convective rolls imprint on sea surface roughness is confirmed through the intercomparison with MABL turbulent organization deduced from airborne measurements. A discretization of the SAR wide swath into 25 x 25 km2 tiles then allows us to capture the spatial variability of the turbulence organization varying from rolls to cells. Secondly, we objectively detect cold pools within the SAR image and combine them with geostationary brightness temperature. The geometrical or physically-based metrics of cold pools are correlated to cloud properties. This provides a promising methodology to analyze the dynamics of convective systems as seen from below and above. Key Points Atmospheric coherent structures, rolls and cold pools are systematically detected and analyzed in a high-resolution SAR wide swath image Properties of rolls from SAR measurements are comparable with the circulation organization deduced from airborne data A diversity of cold pool geometrical and dynamical features is related to cloud life cycle provided by satellite brightness temperature Plain Language Summary We propose an innovative approach to investigate the marine atmospheric boundary layer dynamics by combining spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images, brightness temperature from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and in situ turbulence airborne measurements. Focusing on February 13th, 2020, two types of atmospheric processes are investigated: trade wind boundary layer organizations and cold pools. The signature of coherent structures on sea surface roughness, especially convective rolls, is validated with respect to the turbulence airborne measurements. The cold pools are detected within the SAR image using an identification technique based on the filtering of backscatter signal increments. Cold pool characteristics such as their size or the gust front intensity can then be directly derived from the SAR image. The GOES images provide cloud field properties every 10 min. Exploring backward cloud evolution with respect to the SAR image timing appears able to catch the life cycle of cold pools and convective clouds from which they originate. The application of this approach could pave the way to access the dynamics of convective systems as seen from below and above, allowing to go one step further in the quantitative use of SAR images to investigate boundary layer processes

The frictional layer in the observed momentum budget of the trades

International audienceProfiles of eddy momentum flux divergence are calculated as the residual in the momentum budget constructed from airborne circular dropsonde arrays (∼ 220 km) for thirteen days during the EUREC 4 A/ATOMIC field study. The observed dynamical forcing averaged over all flights agrees broadly with ECMWF IFS forecasts. In the direction of the flow, a mean flux divergence (friction) exists over a 1.5 km deep Ekman layer, and a mean flux convergence (acceleration) is present near cloud tops. The friction is counter-gradient between 1-1.5 km, where vertical wind shear exceeds the observed thermal wind. From the frictional profile, a 10 m momentum flux of ∼ 0.1 Nm −2 is derived, in line with Saildrone turbulence measurements. A momentum flux divergence in the crosswind direction is pronounced near the surface and acts to veer the wind, opposing the friction-induced cross-isobaric wind turning. Weaker friction and upper level acceleration of easterly flow is observed when stronger winds and more vigorous convection prevail. Turbulence measurements on board the SAFIRE ATR-42 (ATR) aircraft and the UAS CU RAAVEN reveal pronounced spatial variability of momentum fluxes, with a non-negligible contribution of meso-scales (5-60 km). The findings highlight the non-trivial impact of turbulence, convection and mesoscale flows in the presence of diverse cloud fields on the depth and strength of the frictional layer

Surface atmosphere exchanges of chemical compounds in a wet savanna ecosystem site in West Africa during the DACCIWA field campaign

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Water isotopic characterisation of the cloud–circulation coupling in the North Atlantic trades – Part 1:A process-oriented evaluation of COSMOiso simulations with EUREC⁴A observations

International audienceStable water isotope observations have the potential to provide information on cloud processes in the trade-wind region, in particular when combined with high-resolution model simulations. In order to evaluate this potential, nested convection-resolving COSMOiso simulations with horizontal grid spacings of 10, 5, and 1 km were carried out in this study over the tropical Atlantic for the time period of the EUREC4A field experiment. To keep the conditions in the domain as close as possible to the real meteorology, we applied a spectral nudging of horizontal winds towards reanalysis data. The comparison to airborne in situ and remote sensing observations shows that the three simulations are able to distinguish between different mesoscale cloud organisation patterns as well as between periods with comparably high and low rain rates. Precipitation, cloud fraction and liquid water content are sensitive to the grid spacing. Cloud fraction and liquid water content show a better agreement with aircraft observations with higher spatial resolution. Contrastingly, temperature, humidity, and isotopes in vapour remain fairly unaffected by the model resolution. A low-level cold-dry bias, including too depleted vapour in the subcloud and cloud layer and too enriched vapour in the free troposphere, is found in all three simulations. Furthermore, the simulated secondary isotope variable d-excess in vapour is overestimated compared to observations. Special attention is given to the cloud base level, the formation altitude of shallow cumulus clouds, which are rooted in the thermals of the subcloud layer. The temporal variability of the simulated isotope variables at cloud base agrees reasonably well with observations, with correlations of the flight-to-flight data as high as 0.69 for δ2H and 0.74 for d-excess. A close examination of different mesoscale cloud base features, including clouds and clear-sky dry-warm patches, and their isotopic characteristics shows that i) these features are represented faithfully in the model with similar frequency of occurrence, isotope signals and specific humidity anomalies as found in the observations (+2 ‰ to +5 ‰ [+2 g kg−1] for precipitating clouds vs. −3 ‰ to −4 ‰ [−2 g kg−1] in dry-warm patches for δ2H [q]) and ii) the δ2H of cloud base vapour at the hourly time scale is mainly controlled by mesoscale transport and not by local microphysical processes while the d-excess is mainly controlled by large-scale drivers. Overall, this evaluation of COSMOiso, including the isotopic characterisation of cloud base features, suggests that the simulations can be used for investigating the role of atmospheric circulations on different scales for controlling the formation of shallow cumulus clouds in the trade-wind region, as will be done in part 2 of this study. Additionally, we provide explicit recommendations for adaptations of the modelling setup to be tested in future research

EUREC4A

Abstract. The science guiding the EUREC4A campaign and its measurements are presented. EUREC4A comprised roughly five weeks of measurements in the downstream winter trades of the North Atlantic – eastward and south-eastward of Barbados. Through its ability to characterize processes operating across a wide range of scales, EUREC4A marked a turning point in our ability to observationally study factors influencing clouds in the trades, how they will respond to warming, and their link to other components of the earth system, such as upper-ocean processes or, or the life-cycle of particulate matter. This characterization was made possible by thousands (2500) of sondes distributed to measure circulations on meso (200 km) and larger (500 km) scales, roughly four hundred hours of flight time by four heavily instrumented research aircraft, four global-ocean class research vessels, an advanced ground-based cloud observatory, a flotilla of autonomous or tethered measurement devices operating in the upper ocean (nearly 10000 profiles), lower atmosphere (continuous profiling), and along the air-sea interface, a network of water stable isotopologue measurements, complemented by special programmes of satellite remote sensing and modeling with a new generation of weather/climate models. In addition to providing an outline of the novel measurements and their composition into a unified and coordinated campaign, the six distinct scientific facets that EUREC4A explored – from Brazil Ring Current Eddies to turbulence induced clustering of cloud droplets and its influence on warm-rain formation – are presented along with an overview EUREC4A's outreach activities, environmental impact, and guidelines for scientific practice. </jats:p