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Sensitivity of Latent Heating Profiles to Environmental Conditions: Implications for TRMM and Climate ResearchThe Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) as a part of NASA's Earth System Enterprise is the first mission dedicated to measuring tropical rainfall through microwave and visible sensors, and includes the first spaceborne rain radar. Tropical rainfall comprises two-thirds of global rainfall. It is also the primary distributor of heat through the atmosphere's circulation. It is this circulation that defines Earth's weather and climate. Understanding rainfall and its variability is crucial to understanding and predicting global climate change. Weather and climate models need an accurate assessment of the latent heating released as tropical rainfall occurs. Currently, cloud model-based algorithms are used to derive latent heating based on rainfall structure. Ultimately, these algorithms can be applied to actual data from TRMM. This study investigates key underlying assumptions used in developing the latent heating algorithms. For example, the standard algorithm is highly dependent on a system's rainfall amount and structure. It also depends on an a priori database of model-derived latent heating profiles based on the aforementioned rainfall characteristics. Unanswered questions remain concerning the sensitivity of latent heating profiles to environmental conditions (both thermodynamic and kinematic), regionality, and seasonality. This study investigates and quantifies such sensitivities and seeks to determine the optimal latent heating profile database based on the results. Ultimately, the study seeks to produce an optimized latent heating algorithm based not only on rainfall structure but also hydrometeor profiles.
Document ID
20010016293
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Shepherd, J. Marshall
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD United States)
Einaudi, Franco
Date Acquired
August 20, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2000
Subject Category
Environment Pollution
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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