Phys.org October 2, 2023
Convective clouds in the atmosphere can aggregate in a variety of ways, from individual cells to larger systems like tropical cyclones and squall lines. An international team of researchers (USA – University of New Mexico, MIT, Germany, Ethiopia, France) used remote sensing datasets of water vapor isotopic composition along with objective measures of convective aggregation to better understand the impact of convective aggregation on the atmospheric hydrologic cycle in the global tropics for the period 2015–2020. When convection was unaggregated, vertical velocity profiles were top-heavy, mixing ratios increased and water vapor δD decreased as the mean precipitation rate increased. Aggregated convection was associated with bottom-heavy vertical velocity profiles and a positive correlation between mixing ratio and δD. Convective aggregation provided a useful paradigm for understanding the relationships between mixing ratio and isotopic composition across a range of convective settings. According to the researchers their results may have utility for a variety of applications including the interpretation of paleoclimate archives and the evaluation of numerical simulations of convection… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Maps showing the count of data points from 2015 to 2020 in 5 Ă— 5-degree bins… Credit: AGU Advances, Volume 4, Issue 5 e2023AV000877