Case: 31 March 2019

Summary

Transitional event from closed to open cell conditions

Description

This was a hybrid cloud regime event that initially featured a widespread precipitating stratocumulus deck that eventually transitioned to open cell cumulus field after midday. Winds for this event were light and from a northerly direction. The melting level was relatively low throughout (~1.5 km AGL), remained below the observed cloud echo top heights throughout both cloud phases of this event. Some evidence of high clouds from SEVIRI observations, however these remained south of the Azores region of interest and briefly advected through the domain towards the end of this event (after 18 UTC).

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI. RLPROF-FEX

Critical period: 12:00-15:00

Transitional period from closed to open cell conditions

Figure 64 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.