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Relating Convective and Stratiform Rain to Latent HeatingThe relationship among surface rainfall, its intensity, and its associated stratiform amount is established by examining observed precipitation data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR). The results show that for moderate-high stratiform fractions, rain probabilities are strongly skewed toward light rain intensities. For convective-type rain, the peak probability of occurrence shifts to higher intensities but is still significantly skewed toward weaker rain rates. The main differences between the distributions for oceanic and continental rain are for heavily convective rain. The peak occurrence, as well as the tail of the distribution containing the extreme events, is shifted to higher intensities for continental rain. For rainy areas sampled at 0.58 horizontal resolution, the occurrence of conditional rain rates over 100 mm/day is significantly higher over land. Distributions of rain intensity versus stratiform fraction for simulated precipitation data obtained from cloud-resolving model (CRM) simulations are quite similar to those from the satellite, providing a basis for mapping simulated cloud quantities to the satellite observations. An improved convective-stratiform heating (CSH) algorithm is developed based on two sources of information: gridded rainfall quantities (i.e., the conditional intensity and the stratiform fraction) observed from the TRMM PR and synthetic cloud process data (i.e., latent heating, eddy heat flux convergence, and radiative heating/cooling) obtained from CRM simulations of convective cloud systems. The new CSH algorithm-derived heating has a noticeably different heating structure over both ocean and land regions compared to the previous CSH algorithm. Major differences between the new and old algorithms include a significant increase in the amount of low- and midlevel heating, a downward emphasis in the level of maximum cloud heating by about 1 km, and a larger variance between land and ocean in the new CSH algorithm.
Document ID
20110016136
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
External Source(s)
Authors
Tao, Wei-Kuo
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Lang, Stephen
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Zeng, Xiping
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Shige, Shoichi
(Kyoto Univ. Kyoto, Japan)
Takayabu, Yukari
(Tokyo Univ. Japan)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
April 6, 2010
Publication Information
Publication: Journal of Climate
Publisher: American Meteorological Society
Volume: 23
Issue: 7
ISSN: 0894-8755
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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