Determination of Bulk Properties of Tropical Cloud Clusters from Large-Scale Heat and Moisture Budgets

1973/05/01 by Michio Yanai, Steven Esbensen, Steven K. Esbensen +1 · 1,895 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Atmospheric aerosols and clouds #Atmospheric sciences #Climate variability and models #Cloud computing #Cloud physics #Convection #Entrainment (biomusicology) #Environmental science #Geology #Latent heat #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Meteorology #Moisture #Physics #Water content #Water vapor

paper · pdf · doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1973)030<0611:dobpot>2.0.co;2

published in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 30(4), 611-627 (American Meteorological Society)

openalex publication_date 1973/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

The bulk properties of tropical cloud clusters, such as the vertical mass flux, the excess temperature, and moisture and the liquid water content of the clouds, are determined from a combination of 1) the observed large-scale heat and moisture budgets over an area covering the cloud cluster, and 2) a model of a cumulus ensemble which exchanges mass, heat, water vapor and liquid water with the environment through entrainment and detrainment. The method also provides an understanding of how the environmental air is heated and moistened by the cumulus convection. An estimate of the average cloud cluster properties and the heat and moisture balance of the environment, obtained from 1956 Marshall Islands data, is presented.

Cited by

• GraphCast Skill and Systematic Biases in Indian Summer Monsoon Forecasts: Evaluation Against ERA5 and IMERG
• The composition of Titans atmosphere : a meteorological perspective
• Sensitivity of climate simulations to the parameterization of cumulus convection in the Canadian climate centre general circulation model
• The Stirring Tropics: Theory of Moisture Mode–Hadley Cell Interactions
• Unraveling the Indian monsoon’s role in fueling the unprecedented 2022 Marine Heatwave in the Western North Pacific
• Top- and bottom-heavy vertical velocity structures: physical modes of layered atmospheric models
• Clear‐Sky Convergence, Water Vapor Spectroscopy, and the Origin of Tropical Congestus Clouds
• Heat and Moisture Budget Analysis with an Improved Form of Moist Thermodynamics
• Learning the Representations of Moist Convection with Convolutional Neural Networks
• Unraveling the Formation Mechanism of Exceptionally Strong Marine Heatwaves in the Northeast Pacific in 2020
• Phase‐Locked Rossby Wave‐4 Pattern Dominates the 2022‐Like Concurrent Heat Extremes Across the Northern Hemisphere
• The first and second order approximations of the third-law moist-air entropy potential temperature
• Local atmospheric response to warm mesoscale ocean eddies in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Confluence region. [europepmc]
• Ramifications of Atmospheric Humidity on Monsoon Depressions over the Indian Subcontinent. [europepmc]
• Climate change over the Mediterranean and current destruction of marine ecosystem. [europepmc]
• EUREC 4 A: A Field Campaign to Elucidate the Couplings Between Clouds, Convection and Circulation. [europepmc]
• Potential impact of atmospheric heating over East Europe on the zonal shift in the South Asian high: the role of the Silk Road teleconnection. [europepmc]
• Four Theories of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. [europepmc]
• Interannual variability of the frequency of MJO phases and its association with two types of ENSO. [europepmc]
• Mechanisms linking multi-year La Niña with preceding strong El Niño. [europepmc]
• East Asian summer monsoon enhanced by COVID-19. [europepmc]
• The Role of Convective Up- and Downdrafts in the Transport of Trace Gases in the Amazon. [europepmc]
• East Asian summer rainfall stimulated by subseasonal Indian monsoonal heating. [europepmc]
• Northeast Pacific warm blobs sustained via extratropical atmospheric teleconnections. [europepmc]
• No decrease of tropical convection in individual deep convective systems with global warming. [europepmc]
• Integrated relative humidity as a layer-resolved indicator for moisture-precipitation interactions. [europepmc]

Related

• Numerical Simulation Of Warm Rain Process
• Heat and Moisture Budget Analysis with an Improved Form of Moist Thermodynamics
• How Convective Mass Flux Responds to Environmental Humidity
• Cloud-system resolving simulations with the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System global atmospheric model (GEOS-5)
• Entrainment and the tropical tropospheric thermal structure in global climate models