Tropical deep convection exhibits complex organization over a wide range of scales. This study investigates the relationships between the spatial organization of deep convection and the large-scale atmospheric state. By using several satellite datasets and reanalyses, and by defining a simple diagnostic of convective aggregation, relationships between the degree of convective aggregation and the amount of water vapor, turbulent surface fluxes, and radiation are highlighted above tropical oceans. When deep convection is more aggregated, the middle and upper troposphere are drier in the convection-free environment, turbulent surface fluxes are enhanced, and the low-level and midlevel cloudiness is reduced in the environment. Humidity and cloudiness changes lead to a large increase in outgoing longwave radiation. Cloud changes also result in reduced reflected shortwave radiation. Owing to these opposing effects, the sensitivity of the radiative budget at the top of the atmosphere to convective aggregation turns out to be weak, but the distribution of radiative heating throughout the troposphere is affected. These results suggest that feedbacks between convective aggregation and the large-scale atmospheric state might influence large-scale dynamics and the transports of water and energy and, thus, play a role in the climate variability and change. These observational findings are qualitatively consistent with previous cloud-resolving model results, except for the effects on cloudiness and reflected shortwave radiation. The proposed methodology may be useful for assessing the representation of convective aggregation and its interaction with the large-scale atmospheric state in various numerical models.

Ambitious climate change mitigation plans call for a significant increase in the use of renewables, which could, however, make the supply system more vulnerable to climate variability and changes. Here we evaluate climate change impacts on solar photovoltaic (PV) power in Europe using the recent EURO-CORDEX ensemble of high-resolution climate projections together with a PV power production model and assuming a well-developed European PV power fleet. Results indicate that the alteration of solar PV supply by the end of this century compared with the estimations made under current climate conditions should be in the range (−14%;+2%), with the largest decreases in Northern countries. Temporal stability of power generation does not appear as strongly affected in future climate scenarios either, even showing a slight positive trend in Southern countries. Therefore, despite small decreases in production expected in some parts of Europe, climate change is unlikely to threaten the European PV sector.