Convective vertical velocity and cloud internal vertical structure: An A‐Train perspective

Abstract

AbstractThis paper describes a novel use of A‐Train observations to estimate vertical velocities for actively growing convective plumes and to relate them to cloud internal vertical structure. Convective vertical velocity is derived from time‐delayed (1–2 min) IR measurements from MODIS and IIR. Convective vertical velocities are found to be clustered around 2–4 m/s but the distributions are positively skewed with long tails extending to larger values. Land convection during the 13:30 overpasses has higher vertical velocities than those during the 1:30 overpasses; oceanic convection shows the opposite, albeit smaller, contrast. Our results also show that convection with larger vertical velocity tends to transport larger precipitation‐size particle and/or greater amount of water substance to higher altitude and produces heavier rainfall. Finally, we discuss the implications of this study for the designs of future space‐borne missions that focus on fast‐evolving processes such as those related to clouds and precipitation.