Criticality in the Shallow-to-Deep Transition of Simulated Tropical Marine Convection

Abstract

Abstract Idealized simulations of tropical, marine convection depict shallow, nonprecipitating cumuli located beneath the 0°C level transitioning into cumulonimbi that reach up to 12 km and higher. The timing of the transition was only weakly related to environmental stability, and 13 of the 15 simulations run with 5 different lapse-rate profiles had rain develop at nearly the same time after model start. The key quantity that apparently controlled deep convective formation was vertical acceleration inside cloudy updrafts between cloud base and the 0°C level. Below a critical value of updraft vertical acceleration, little rainfall occurred. Just as the domain-mean updraft acceleration reached the critical value, the first convection quickly grew to past 12 km altitude. Then, as acceleration increased above the critical value, rain rate averaged in the model domain increased quickly over about a 3-h-long period. The specific value of the critical updraft acceleration depended on how updrafts were defined and in what layer the acceleration was averaged; however, regardless of how criticality was defined, a robust relationship between domain-mean updraft vertical acceleration and rain rate occurred. Positive acceleration of updrafts below the 0°C level was present below 2.75 km and was largest in the 500 m above cloud base. However, the maximum difference between updraft and environmental temperatures occurred between 2 and 3 km. The domain-mean Archimedean buoyancy of updrafts relative to some reference state was a poor predictor for domain-mean rain rate. The exact value of the critical updraft acceleration likely depends on numerous other factors that were not investigated. Significance Statement A numerical model is utilized to investigate potential thermodynamic and dynamic quantities related to the growth of cumulus clouds into cumulonimbus clouds over tropical oceans when the atmosphere is sufficiently moist to support rainfall. Archimedean buoyancy alone cannot be used to predict rain rate reliably. Instead the total buoyancy not relative to an arbitrary reference state must be considered. The simulated relationship between total vertical acceleration in updrafts and rain rate was robust. While the processes that control the vertical acceleration remain unclear, our results highlight the importance of observing processes that occur on spatial scales of tens of meters and temporal scales of a few minutes.