Pearson, KJ, Lister, GMS, Birch, CE et al. (3 more authors) (2014) Modelling the diurnal cycle of tropical convection across the ‘grey zone’. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 140 (679). 491 - 499. ISSN 0035-9009
Abstract
We present the results of simulations carried out with the Met Office Unified Model at 12, 4 and 1.5 km resolution for a large region centred on West Africa using several different representations of the convection processes. These span a range of resolutions from much coarser than the size of the convection processes to cloud-system-resolving and thus encompass the intermediate ‘grey zone’. The diurnal cycle in the extent of convective regions in the models is tested against observations from the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget instrument on Meteosat-8. By this measure, the two best-performing simulations are a 12 km model without convective parametrization, using Smagorinsky-style subgrid-scale mixing in all three dimensions, and a 1.5 km simulation with two-dimensional Smagorinsky mixing. Of these, the 12 km model produces a better match to the magnitude of the total cloud fraction but the 1.5 km one results in better timing for its peak value. The results suggest that the previously reported improvement in the representation of the diurnal cycle of convective organization in the 4 km model compared with the standard 12 km configuration is principally a result of the convection scheme employed rather than the improved resolution per se. The details of this result and implications for high-resolution model simulations are discussed.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014, Wiley. This is the accepted version of the following article:Pearson, KJ, Lister, GMS, Birch, CE, Allan, RP, Hogan, RJ and Woolnough, SJ (2014) Modelling the diurnal cycle of tropical convection across the ‘grey zone’. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 140 (679). 491 - 499. ISSN 0035-9009 which has been published in final form at DOI10.1002/qj.2145. In addition, authors may also transmit, print and share copies with colleagues, provided that there is no systematic distribution of the submitted version, e.g. posting on a listserve, network or automated delivery. |
Keywords: | Africa; cascade; CRM; CSRM; GERB; OLR; parametrization; UM |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 29 Jan 2015 14:07 |
Last Modified: | 16 Jan 2018 08:23 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/qj.2145 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/qj.2145 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:82663 |