A Modeling Case Study of Post-frontal Mixed-phase Clouds in the Marine Boundary Layer Over the Southern Ocean in MARCUS

Download or read book A Modeling Case Study of Post-frontal Mixed-phase Clouds in the Marine Boundary Layer Over the Southern Ocean in MARCUS written by Yishi Hu and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multi-day period (February 23-26, 2018) of post-frontal shallow convective mixed-phase clouds observed during the shipborne Measurements of Aerosols, Radiation and CloUds over the Southern Ocean (MARCUS) field campaign is studied using the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model with the aim of understanding ice production as well as model sensitivity to ice process parameterizations. The Cloud-resolving model Radar SIMulator (CRSIM) is firstly used in this study to convert WRF S-band output into W-band radar observables. Comparisons between the observations and simulations suggest that the model captures the observed synoptic pattern and shallow convective nature of the mixed-phase clouds. The simulated clouds are mostly precipitating and liquid dominated. Interestingly, the control simulation significantly underestimates the ice content and overestimates the supercooled liquid water, which is contrary to the bias common in global climate models. Sensitivity simulations targeted at ice production processes suggest that the rime splintering process is not a primary contributor and that the simulated clouds show negligible sensitivity to cloud droplet number concentrations. Higher number concentrations of ice nuclei do not guarantee more ice production overall. However, the simulated mixed-phase clouds are found to be highly sensitive to the implementation of immersion freezing and condensation/deposition freezing. By increasing immersion freezing of cloud droplets or relaxing thresholds for condensation/deposition freezing, the model significantly improves its performance in producing ice. The key results of this work call for an increase in observations of ice nuclei, especially over the remote Southern Ocean and at relatively high temperatures.