Retrieved Latent Heating from TRMM

The global hydrological cycle is central to the Earth's climate system, with rainfall and the physics of precipitation formation acting as the key links in the cycle. Two-thirds of global rainfall occurs in the tropics with the associated latent heating (LH) accounting for three-fourths of the total heat energy available to the Earth's atmosphere. In addition, fresh water provided by tropical rainfall and its variability exerts a large impact upon the structure and motions of the upper ocean layer. In the last decade, it has been established that standard products of LH from satellite measurements, particularly TRMM measurements, would be a valuable resource for scientific research and applications. Such products would enable new insights and investigations concerning the complexities of convection system life cycles, the diabatic heating controls and feedbacks related to meso-synoptic circulations and their forecasting, the relationship of tropical patterns of LH to the global circulation and climate, and strategies for improving cloud parameterizations in environmental prediction models. The status of retrieved TRMM LH products, TRMM LH inter-comparison and validation project, current TRMM LH applications and critic issues/action items (based on previous five TRMM LH workshops) is presented in this article.