Observational Evidence for Relationships between the Degree of Aggregation of Deep Convection, Water Vapor, Surface Fluxes, and Radiation

AbstractTropical deep convection exhibits complex organization over a wide range of scales. This study investigates the relationships between the spatial organization of deep convection and the large-scale atmospheric state. By using several satellite datasets and reanalyses, and by defining a simple diagnostic of convective aggregation, relationships between the degree of convective aggregation and the amount of water vapor, turbulent surface fluxes, and radiation are highlighted above tropical oceans. When deep convection is more aggregated, the middle and upper troposphere are drier in the convection-free environment, turbulent surface fluxes are enhanced, and the low-level and midlevel cloudiness is reduced in the environment. Humidity and cloudiness changes lead to a large increase in outgoing longwave radiation. Cloud changes also result in reduced reflected shortwave radiation. Owing to these opposing effects, the sensitivity of the radiative budget at the top of the atmosphere to convective aggreg...

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