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Revisiting the Entrainment Relationship of Convective Plumes: A Perspective From Global Observations
Author(s) -
Takahashi Hanii,
Luo Zhengzhao Johnny,
Stephens Graeme
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2020gl092349
Subject(s) - convection , entrainment (biomusicology) , atmospheric convection , climatology , environmental science , atmospheric sciences , geology , meteorology , physics , rhythm , acoustics
Entrainment is an important process affecting convective transport and is a key parameter in convection modeling. For over half a century, an inverse relationship between entrainment rate ( λ ) and convective core size ( R ) has been used in modeling convective clouds. This short letter revisits the λ ‐ R relation using multiple years of CloudSat observations. Results show that the inverse relationship between λ and R is robust. However, they are not scaled by a simple constant. Global satellite observations provide some guidance for choosing the range of the scaling parameter. Further, our analysis shows that continental convective clouds tend to have smaller λ and larger R compared to oceanic convective clouds, suggesting that vertical mass transport by continental convection is more efficient. The satellite‐based study of the λ ‐ R relation has the potential to become a new diagnostic metric for assessing the representation of convection in weather and climate models.