Case: 10 April 2016

Summary

Closed stratocumulus cloud deck that transitioned to widespread open cells

Description

This was a multi-day event (April 10th - 11th) associated with a larger-scale wave that began with clouds exhibiting closed cell stratocumulus structure having embedded precipitation. Inversion height at approximately 2.0 km AGL and increasing to 2.5 km AGL by the evening of 10 April. The cloud field gradually transitioned to open cell structures by 11 April 2016. Winds were from the north and remained consistently from the north with modest magnitudes of 10-20 kts in the boundary layer. Multiple precipitating cells passed over the ENA main site instrumentation, with the most intense individual cell overpasses observed during the open cell regime on 11 April 2016. The melting level was well below observed cloud echo top heights throughout both days (approx. 1.5 km AGL, occasionally as much as 2 km below the highest cell cloud tops on 11 April 2016).

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI. RLPROF-FEX. Additional NPOESS validation radiosonde (04:00 UTC on 11 April 2016)

Critical period: 21:00-04:00

Transition from closed stratocumulus to open cell cloud structures

Figure 24 True color afternoon MODIS AQUA image with overlaid LES domains. The image domain corresponds to the size of the model forcing domain.