The Correlation of Mesoscale Humidity Anomalies With Mesoscale Organization of Marine Stratocumulus From Observations Over the ARM Eastern North Atlantic Site

Abstract

AbstractThe structure of mesoscale cellular organization in marine cloud‐topped boundary layers is found to be well characterized by using a novel compositing approach based on mesoscale variations in the column water vapor path (WVP). The approach is applied to ground‐based observations from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Eastern North Atlantic site. Based on a set of satellite and ground‐based observational criteria, 381 hr of closed‐cell and 227 hr of open‐cell cases were selected from late 2015 to early 2018. Strong correlations are found between mesoscale‐filtered cloud properties and WVP for both closed‐cell and open‐cell regimes. In the moist atmospheric columns, the clouds are thicker with higher tops and lower bases, and stronger precipitation compared to that in the dry columns. Overall, cloud properties of open and closed cells covary similarly with mesoscale moisture perturbations, except that the correlation of liquid water path with WVP is much weaker for open cells. The relations of subcloud properties with WVP are also examined. In the moist columns, surface equivalent potential temperature and relative humidity are higher than in the dry columns. A marginally negative correlation between mesoscale‐filtered subcloud turbulence eddy dissipation rate and WVP is found for closed cells. These results are consistent with the conceptual model of closed cellular mesoscale circulations of Zhou and Bretherton (2019).