Morphological cellular analysis of Pockets of Open Cells on Marine

More of Earth’s surface is covered by Stratocumulus clouds (Sc) than by any other cloud
type making them extremely important for Earth’s energy balance, mostly due to reflection of
solar radiation. However, representing Sc and their radiative impact is one of the largest chal-
lenges for global climate models because these cannot resolve the length scales of the processes
involve in its formation and evolution. For this reason, Sc clouds represent a large uncertainty
for climate projections [1].
The challenge becomes more intricate due to the organizational complexity that Sc clouds
present in a broad range of spatial scales. In particular, Sc fields over the oceans display
characteristic mesoscale patterns that can present both organized and unorganized structures.
Between these morphological types, cellular convection receives particular attention given than
cloud decks self-organize into honeycomb-like hexagonal patterns composed by closed and
open convective cells fields.
The purpose of this project is to analyze satellite images of a particular tendency of Sc to orga-
nize into spatially compact, cellular-patterned, low-reflectivity regions of open cells embedded
in closed cellular cloud fields called as pockets of open cells (POCs) [2].
We aim to propose a segmentation, cell tracking and quantitative analysis of cell shape and
behavior changes in closed and open cell fields, in particular the interaction of both cells when
POCs are formed. A statistical analysis of different POCs will be carried to describe the time
and spatial contributions of cell shape changes, transitions and rearrangements in the evolution
of cellular patterns on Sc clouds considering the local dynamics between individual cells.
We hypothesize that the interaction between cold pools that are formed when open cells pre-
cipitate triggers a rapid dynamics on open cells fields. For its part, closed cells fields present
steady morphology until perturbations are formed triggering the formation of POCs.