22‐Year survey of tropical convection penetrating into the lower stratosphere

Abstract

[1] A 22-year survey of tropical convection penetrating into the stratosphere has been conducted using special subsets of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project cloud data set. In addition to refined information about the geographic distribution of penetrating convective systems, these results show that penetrating convection occurs predominantly in the larger, organized, mesoscale convective systems, whereas smaller, unorganized convective systems rarely penetrate. Durations of penetrating events are longest for the largest systems, hurricanes and typhoons, generally exceeding one day.

A climatological perspective of deep convection penetrating the TTL during the Indian summer monsoon from the AVHRR and MODIS instruments

“…Numerous studies used data from cloud observing sensors to characterize deep convection (e.g. Alcala and Dessler, 2002;Dessler et al, 2006;Fu et al, 2007;Haladay and Stephens, 2009;Hong et al, 2008;Jiang et al, 2004;Liu and Zipser, 2006;Rossow and Pearl, 2007). Here, we extend these earlier studies (often using data at a coarse resolution and/or over a limited time period only) with an analysis of the vertical structure, geographical distribution and their variability of deep convection during the Indian monsoon in unprecedented detail.…”

A 6-year global cloud climatology from the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder AIRS and a statistical analysis in synergy with CALIPSO and CloudSat

“…These vertically extending clouds correspond possibly to larger organized, mesoscale convective systems, which lead more often to penetrating convection than smaller, unorganized convective systems as shown by Rossow and Pearl (2007).…”

“…In the tropics we observe that only the opaque clouds that are the thickest geometrically and (the probably surrounding anvil) cirrus penetrate the stratosphere. These vertically extending clouds likely correspond to larger organized, mesoscale convective systems, which more often lead to penetrating convection than smaller, unorganized convective systems as has been shown by Rossow and Pearl (2007). Opaque clouds with smaller geometrical thickness reach to about 2 km below the tropopause.…”

A daytime climatological distribution of high opaque ice cloud classes over the Indian summer monsoon region observed from 25-year AVHRR data

“…Apart from being responsible for precipitation, these clouds influence radiative balance of the region significantly and also play a crucial role in transporting mass and moisture to the upper levels of the troposphere (Gettelman et al, 2002;Fischer et al, 2003;Jiang et al, 2004;Liu and Zipser, 2005;Tang and Chen, 2006;Houze Jr. et al, 2007;Rossow and Pearl, 2007;Hong et al, 2008). The Indian subcontinent shows high variability in the geographical distribution of various convective cloud classes (e.g.…”

“…The footprints of such active and break spells of monsoon can be seen in the way convective cloud classes are distributed during such periods and help in understanding cloud-precipitation interactions during such contradicting conditions. So far, there are few studies that investigate the climatology of deep convective clouds from the satellite sensors, however they use only few years of satellite sensor data and/or have very coarse spatio-temporal resolution (Stubenrauch et al, 1999;Wylie and Menzel, 1999;Gettelman et al, 2002;Jiang et al, 2004;Liu and Zipser, 2005;Stubenrauch et al, 2006;Tang and Chen, 2006;Rossow and Pearl, 2007;Hong et al, 2008), and more importantly, do not explicitly examine the distribution of various convective cloud classes during individual monsoon months over India.…”