Thermal aspect of the diurnal variation of tropical convective and stratiform rainfall

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/20/10/109201

Abstract The diurnal variation of radiation plays a key role in determining the diurnal variations of tropical oceanic convective and stratiform rainfall, and the examination of such a relationship requires a direct link between the radiation term in a heat budget and the surface rain rate in a cloud budget. Thus, the thermally related surface rainfall budgets derived from the combination of cloud and heat budgets are analysed with two-dimensional equilibrium cloud-resolving model simulation data to study the effects of sea surface temperature (SST) and cloud radiative, and microphysical processes on the diurnal variations of convective and stratiform rainfall. The results show that the increase in SST, the inclusion of diurnal variation of SST and the exclusion of cloud radiative processes increase negative diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over rainfall-free regions during the nighttime through changing the vertical structures of diurnal anomaly of radiation in the troposphere. The strengthened negative diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over rainfall-free regions enhance positive diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over convective regions, which intensifies the positive diurnal anomaly of convective rainfall. The exclusion of microphysical effects of ice clouds increases the negative diurnal anomaly of heat divergence over rainfall-free regions during the nighttime through reducing latent heat; this appears to enhance the positive diurnal anomaly of heat divergence over raining stratiform regions, and thus stratiform rainfall.

Keywords: thermal aspects diurnal variation tropical convective and stratiform rainfall

Received: 20 December 2010
Revised: 19 April 2011
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:	92.60.Ox	(Tropical meteorology)
	92.40.Ea	(Precipitation)
	92.05Fg
	92.60.Nv	(Cloud physics and chemistry)

Fund: Project supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2009CB421505), the Funds for International Cooperation and Exchange of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40921160379), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40775036).

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Cui Xiao-Peng(崔晓鹏) and Li Xiao-Fan(李小凡) Thermal aspect of the diurnal variation of tropical convective and stratiform rainfall 2011 Chin. Phys. B 20 109201

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Thermal aspect of the diurnal variation of tropical convective and stratiform rainfall

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