Case: 30 July 2018

Summary

Thin stratocumulus over ENA site with broken regional coverage

Description

This was a multi-day closed cell stratocumulus event with solid cloud fractional coverage over the ENA main site. However, there was broken and/or dissipating cloud coverage regional over the larger Azores domain during the daytime hours on both events. The low-level winds were light and from a northerly direction. The cloud deck featured a cloud echo top height that remained constant at approximately 1.3 km AGL, with periods of nonprecipitating cloud and radar signatures of drizzle.

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI. SACR. RLPROF-FEX. Additional ENA GNSS ground station radiosonde launched on July 30th (0330 UTC)

Critical period: 08:00-18:00

Period with the most continuous closed stratocumulus coverage over the ENA main site

True color MODIS AQUA — Figure 60 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.