Hydrometeors Injected into the

Large-scale Environment by
Tropical Cloud Systems

Robert A. Houze & Courtney Schumacher

Co-PIs

ARM Science Team Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 27 March 2006

Tropical MCSs inject lots of hydrometeors into upper troposphere

Idealized life cycle of tropical MCS as proposed by Houze 1982

Think of the following schematic as a composite of the water budget of an
MCS over its whole life cycle

After Houze et al. (1980)

 Rs s Csu CT
Stratiform water budget equation Esd a Csu CT
Csu CT Rs Esd Ese Ese b Csu CT
where
s a b 1
 Rs s Csu CT
Measurements
Esd a Csu CT
Cloud radar Ese
Precip radar Rs Ese b Csu CT
Doppler Esd, Csu, CT where
s a b 1 error
In TWP-ICE we are subdividing the anvil into mixed and ice anvils
 Example from TWP-ICE

Precipitation Radar
20 January 2006 0000UTC dB 20 January 2006 0900UTC dB 20 January 2006 1800UTC dBZ

Z 6 Z 6 6
0
11 110 110
53
S S5 S5
3 3 46
4 4
6 6 39
12 123 123
S S9 S9 32
3 3
2 2 25
2 2
13 135 135 18
1 1
S S S
8 8 11
6 km 1 6 km 1 6 km
130E 131E 132E
1 130E 131E 132E
1 130E 131E 132E 4
4 4

Cloud Radar dBZ

20
28

16 ATTENUATED 21

14
Height (km)

12
7

8 0

-7
4
-14

0 -21
2200 0000 0200 0400 0600 0800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000
19Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 20Jan06 -28
 TWP-ICE
Precipitation
Longer-term Radar Rain Rate This will also
records of (~20 % stratiform) be done for a
the water longer-term
budget climatology.
parameters
also are We will use
being cloud &
derived. precipitation
TWP-ICE Cloud Radar radars
Figures here Anvil Frequency permanently
are for located at
duration of Darwin.
TWP-ICE.
 Using the empirically derived water budget
parameters b and s, the stratiform regions anvil
mass is proportional to the stratiform rain
Ese =(bRs)/s

400 hPa
K/day

200 hPa streamfunction response to CRF assumed proportional to

TRMM rain by Schumacher et al. (2004)
 Summary

Water budget relationships will be used to

investigate the magnitude & mechanisms of anvil
generation by convective systems

Cloud & Precipitation Radar will be used to

estimate terms in the water budgets, & water
budget terms will be checked for internal
consistency

The TWP-ICE dataset is being used to estimate

the water budget terms for some representative
cases, & for long-term dataset at Darwin

Will develop formulas for parameterizing the anvil

mass in terms of satellite observed rainfall.
Thank you!