Case: 30 June 2018

Summary

Closed stratocumulus deck over ENA that gradually transitioned to open cell conditions

Description

This was a multi-day and transitional event that featured relatively closed cell precipitating conditions in the vicinity of the ENA site and southward of the islands. These conditions gradually transitioned into weaker, open cellular clouds. Winds were north or northeasterly throughout this event and light. Cloud echo top heights were observed to be below 1.5 km AGL and in line with sounding inversion height. SEVIRI observations suggested evidence of higher clouds building throughout the northern parts of the Azores region as associated with an approaching synoptic wave.

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI.

Critical period: 03:00-12:00

Closed, precipitating stratocumulus conditions over the ENA site

Figure 58 True color afternoon MODIS AQUA image with overlaid LES domains. The image area corresponds to the 5° region sampled for the larger forcing option. The yellow and orange boxes correspond to the sizes of the 25 km and 102 km LES domains, respectively.