Convective mass flux and cloud anvil development in km-scale climate models

Understanding the interactions between convective processes and anvil cloud properties is increasingly important for future climate feedbacks. However, gaps remain in our understanding of how convection and convective mass flux control deep convective cloud development, and the amount and opacity of anvil cloud.

Progress has been challenged by the lack of a global-scale view of cloud convection and vertical dynamics. Until recently, cloud vertical motion was not observable by geostationary or orbiting satellites, and global climate models represented convection and clouds implicitly only through parameterisations. Now, new opportunities arise from the development of global km-scale climate models which simulate convective dynamics as part of the large scale circulation.

We seek a process-level understanding of the relationship between cloud convective mass flux and anvil cloud at regional scales using the Icosahedral Nonhydrostatic (ICON) global non-hydrostatic km-scale climate model. By tracking convective updrafts and anvil clouds in 3D at 15-minute time resolution using the tobac algorithm cloud properties can be assessed over the cloud lifetime, and simplified physical models can be used to analyse the results. We address the relationship between convective mass flux and key cloud anvil properties in the tracked clouds, as well as when, where and why these relationships vary at regional and global scales.