Case: 03 February 2021

Summary

Wide, precipitating open cellular cumulus cloud organization

Description

Frequent wide and precipitating open cell cumulus over the ENA main site. Boundary layer flows were strong (to 50 kts) and from the northwest. Cloud echo top heights exceeded 4.0 km AGL throughout the first half of this event, and lowered to 3.0 km AGL by the afternoon hours. Cloud tops were consistently observed well above the melting level height for this event (approximately 1.5 km AGL).

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI. RLPROF-FEX. Additional ENA GNSS ground station radiosonde launch (1430 UTC)

Critical period: 12:00-18:00

Transitional period from deeper (~ 4.0 km) open cumulus to shallower (2.5-3.0 km) clouds over ENA site

True color MODIS AQUA — Figure 43 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.