An activity designed to characterise patterns of mesoscale (20 to 2,000 km) organisation of shallow clouds in the downstream trades is described. Patterns of mesoscale organisation observed from space were subjectively defined and learned by 12 trained scientists. The ability of individuals to communicate, learn and replicate the classification was evaluated. Nine‐hundred satellite images spanning the area from 48°W to 58°W, 10°N to 20°N for the boreal winter months (December–February) over 10 years (2007/2008 to 2016/2017) were classified. Each scene was independently labelled by six scientists as being dominated by one of six patterns (one of which was “no‐pattern”). Four patterns of mesoscale organisation could be labelled in a reproducible manner, and were labelled Sugar, Gravel, Fish and Flowers. Sugar consists of small, low clouds of low reflectivity, Gravel clouds form along apparent gust fronts, Fish are skeletal networks (often fishbone‐like) of clouds, while Flowers are circular clumped features defined more by their stratiform cloud elements. Both Fish and Flowers are surrounded by large areas of clear air. These four named patterns were identified 40% of the time, with the most common pattern being Gravel. Sugar was identified the least and suggests that unorganised and very shallow convection is unlikely to dominate large areas of the downstream trade winds. Some of the patterns show signs of seasonal and interannual variability, and some degree of scale selectivity. Comparison of typical patterns with radar imagery suggests that even this subjective and qualitative visual inspection of imagery appears to capture several important physical differences between shallow cloud regimes, such as precipitation and radiative effects.

A description of the daily cycle of oceanic shallow cumulus for undisturbed boreal winter conditions in the North Atlantic trades is presented. Modern investigation tools are used, including storm‐resolving and large‐eddy simulations, runover large domains in realistic configurations, and observations from in situ measurements and satellite‐based retrievals. Models and observations clearly show pronounced diurnal variations in cloudiness, both near cloud base and below the trade inversion. The daily cycle reflects the evolution of two cloud populations: (i) a population of nonprecipitating small cumuli with weak vertical extent, which grows during the day and maximizes around sunset, and (ii) a population o deeper precipitating clouds with a stratiform cloud layer below the trade inversion, which grows during the night and maximizes just before sunrise. Previous studies have reported that cloudiness near cloud base undergoes weak variations on time scales longer than a day. However, here we find that it can vary strongly at the diurnal time scale. This daily cycle could serve as a critical test of the models' representation of the physical processes controlling cloudiness near cloud base, which is thought to be key for the determination of the Earth's climate response to warming.

In situ, airborne and satellite measurements are used to characterize the structure of water vapor in the lower tropical troposphere-below the height, z à ; of the triple-point isotherm, T à : The measurements are evaluated in light of understanding of how lowertropospheric water vapor influences clouds, convection and circulation, through both radiative and thermodynamic effects. Lower-tropospheric water vapor, which concentrates in the first few kilometers above the boundary layer, controls the radiative cooling profile of the boundary layer and lower troposphere. Elevated moist layers originating from a preferred level of convective detrainment induce a profile of radiative cooling that drives circulations which reinforce such features. A theory for this preferred level of cumulus termination is advanced, whereby the difference between T à and the temperature at which primary ice forms gives a 'first-mover advantage' to glaciating cumulus convection, thereby concentrating the regions of the deepest convection and leading to more clouds and moisture near the triple point. A preferred level of convective detrainment near T à implies relative humidity reversals below zà which are difficult to identify using retrievals from satellite-borne microwave and infrared sounders. Isotopologues retrievals provide a hint of such features and their ability to constrain the structure of the vertical humidity profile merits further study. Nonetheless, it will likely remain challenging to resolve dynamically -017-9420-8 important aspects of the vertical structure of water vapor from space using only passive sensors.

International audienceThe Megha-Tropiques mission is operating a suite of payloads dedicated to the documentation of the water and energy cycles in the intertropical region in a low inclination orbit. The satellite was launched in October, 2011 and we here review the scientific activity after the first three years of the mission. The microwave sounder (SAPHIR) and the broad band radiometer (SCARAB) are functioning nominally and exhibit instrumental performances well within the original specifications. The microwave imager, MADRAS, stopped acquisition of scientific data on January 26th, 2013 due to a mechanical failure. During its 16 months of operation, this radiometer experienced electrical issues making its usage difficult and delayed its validation. A suite of geophysical products has been retrieved from the Megha-Tropiques payloads, ranging from TOA radiative flux to water vapor profiles and instantaneous rain rates. Some of these geophysical products have been merged with geostationary data to provide, for instance, daily accumulation of rainfall all over the intertropical region. These products compare favorably with references from ground based or space-borne observation systems. The contribution of the mission unique orbit to its scientific objectives is investigated. Preliminary studies indicate a positive impact on both, humidity Numerical Weather Prediction forecasts thanks to the assimilation of SAPHIR Level 1 data, and on the rainfall estimation derived from the Global Precipitation Mission constellation. After a long commissioning phase, most of the data and the geophysical products suite are validated and readily available for further scientific investigation by the international community

Even though the diurnal cycle of solar forcing on the climate system is well defined, the diurnal evolutions of water vapor and clouds induced by the solar forcing are not yet established across the tropics. Here we combine recent satellite observations of clouds profiles and relative humidity profiles to document the diurnal variations of the water vapor and clouds vertical distributions over all the tropics in June-July-August. While the daily mean water vapor and cloud profiles are different between land and ocean, their diurnal variations with respect to their daily means exhibit similar features. Relative humidity profiles and optically thin cloud fraction profiles vary together which maximize during night-time in the entire troposphere and a minimize in day-time. The fraction of optically opaque clouds peak in the free troposphere in the early afternoon, transforms into a high altitude positive anomaly of optically thin clouds from nightfall to sunrise. In addition, land regions exhibit a daily low thin cloud positive anomaly, while oceanic regions exposed to subsidence air motions exhibit positive anomalies of opaque clouds in the lower atmosphere during the second half of the night, which grow until sunrise.

The microwave payload of the Megha-Tropiques mission is explored to quantify the expected improvements in the retrieval of relative humidity profiles. Estimations of the profiles are performed using a generalized additive model that uses cubic smoothing splines to address the nonlinear dependencies between the brightness temperatures (T B ) in the 183.31 GHz band and the relative humidity of specified tropospheric layers. Under clear-sky and oceanic situations, the six-channel configuration of the SAPHIR radiometer clearly improves the retrieval and reduces by a factor of two the variance of the residuals with respect to the current spaceborne humidity sounders that have three channels in this band (AMSU-B, MHS). Additional information from the MADRAS radiometer (at 23.8 and 157 GHz) further improves the restitution with correlation coefficient higher than 0.89 throughout the troposphere.

A long‐term archive of clear‐sky Meteosat “water vapor” observations, covering the July 1983 to February 1997 period with a 3 hourly time step and a spatial resolution of 0.625°, is presented. Cloud clearing is performed using a scene selection procedure based on the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project DX product. In this procedure low cloud scenes are kept because of the negligible contribution of the low atmospheric layer in this spectral band. Cloud contamination is shown to have little influence on the clear‐sky radiance (CSR) field and is mainly confined to the continental Intertropical Convergence Zone with values less than 0.5 K. This scene selection yields to a significantly enhanced sampling with respect to pure clear‐sky in the subtropical high regions. Homogenization of the 14 year database is performed in accordance with existing technique. A comparison to the operational radiosondes archive indicates a small bias of 0.3 K that is stable throughout the period. A first analysis of the CSR variability reveals that the intraseasonal variance over the subtropical dry regions has a strong seasonal cycle in the Northern Hemisphere that is not observed in the Southern Hemisphere. Such a data set completes the ones currently available to document the water vapor variability of the troposphere from climatic down to regional and daily scales.

Abstract.A statistical method trained and optimized to retrieve seven-layer relative humidity (RH) profiles is presented and evaluated with measurements from radiosondes. The method makes use of the microwave payload of the Megha-Tropiques platform, namely the SAPHIR sounder and the MADRAS imager. The approach, based on a generalized additive model (GAM), embeds both the physical and statistical characteristics of the inverse problem in the training phase, and no explicit thermodynamical constraint -such as a temperature profile or an integrated water vapor content -is provided to the model at the stage of retrieval. The model is built for cloud-free conditions in order to avoid the cases of scattering of the microwave radiation in the 18.7-183.31 GHz range covered by the payload. Two instrumental configurations are tested: a SAPHIR-MADRAS scheme and a SAPHIR-only scheme to deal with the stop of data acquisition of MADRAS in January 2013 for technical reasons. A comparison to learning machine algorithms (artificial neural network and support-vector machine) shows equivalent performance over a large realistic set, promising low errors (biases < 2.2 %RH) and scatters (correlations > 0.8) throughout the troposphere (150-900 hPa). A comparison to radiosonde measurements performed during the international field experiment CINDY/DYNAMO/AMIE (winter 2011-2012) confirms these results for the mid-tropospheric layers (correlations between 0.6 and 0.92), with an expected degradation of the quality of the estimates at the surface and top layers. Finally a rapid insight of the estimated large-scale RH field from Megha-Tropiques is presented and compared to ERA-Interim.