Simulated Precipitation Diurnal Variation With a Deep Convective Closure Subject to Shallow Convection in Community Atmosphere Model Version 5 Coupled With CLUBB

Abstract

AbstractIn order to improve the physical consistency between shallow and deep convection, we modify the deep convective closure in the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5) coupled with a third‐order turbulence closure parameterization (i.e., Cloud Layers Unified by Binormals [CLUBB]). The revised closure reserves a portion of the total convective available potential energy for shallow convection via utilizing the heating and moistening profiles from CLUBB to distribute moisture and energy between shallow and deep convection. Simulations at two resolutions (i.e., 2° and 0.5°, respectively) are conducted to investigate the impacts of convective closure on the simulated precipitation diurnal variations. Results from low‐resolution simulations show that the revised closure suppresses deep convection until the lower troposphere is sufficiently moistened by shallow convection, which improves the precipitation diurnal variation simulations compared with the default closure, with the precipitation diurnal peak over tropical lands delayed from 12LST to 19LST. The revised closure better simulates the diurnal variations for precipitation over the Asian monsoon region, such as the delayed precipitation onset, but still fails to well capture the nighttime peak for precipitation there. This deficiency is alleviated to some extent when applying the revised closure in high‐resolution simulations, but nighttime precipitation is still underestimated probably because key processes responsible for nighttime convection are missing. Overall, our results indicate that establishing the consistency between shallow and deep convection is critical for the precipitation diurnal cycle simulations.