Evolution of Precipitation Structure During the November DYNAMO MJO Event: Cloud-Resolving Model Inter-comparison and Cross-Validation using Radar Observations
- Morgan State Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- Univ. of Miami, Miami, FL (United States)
- Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
- Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States)
- Texas A & M Univ. at Corpus Christi, TX (United States)
- Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States)
- NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, Seattle, WA (United States)
Evolution of precipitation structures are simulated and compared with radar observations for the November Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) event during the DYNAmics of the MJO (DYNAMO) field campaign. Three ground-based, ship-borne, and space-borne precipitation radars and three Cloud-Resolving Models (CRMs) driven by observed large-scale forcing are used to study precipitation structures at different locations over the central equatorial Indian Ocean. Convective strength is represented by 0-dBZ echo-top heights, and convective organization by contiguous 17-dBZ areas. The multi-radar and multi-model framework allows for more stringent model validations. The emphasis is on testing models’ ability to simulate subtle differences observed at different radar sites when the MJO event passed through. The results show that CRMs forced by site-specific large-scale forcing can reproduce not only common features in cloud populations, but also subtle variations observed by different radars. The comparisons also revealed common deficiencies in CRM simulations where they underestimate radar echo-top heights for the strongest convection within large, organized precipitation features. Cross-validations with multiple radars and models also enable quantitative comparisons in CRM sensitivity studies using different large-scale forcing, microphysical schemes and parameters, resolutions, and domain sizes. In terms of radar echo-top height temporal variations, many model sensitivity tests have better correlations than radar/model comparisons, indicating robustness in model performance on this aspect. It is further shown that well-validated model simulations could be used to constrain uncertainties in observed echo-top heights when the low-resolution surveillance scanning strategy is used.
- Research Organization:
- Morgan State Univ., Baltimore, MD (United States); NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD (United States); Univ. of Miami, FL (United States); Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States); Colorado State Univ., Fort Collins, CO (United States); Texas A & M Univ. at Corpus Christi, TX (United States); Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States); NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER). Earth and Environmental Systems Science Division
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0006880
- OSTI ID:
- 1706627
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-GSFC-17199
- Resource Relation:
- Related Information: Xiaowen Li, M. A. Janiga, S. Wang, W.-K. Tao, A. Rowe, W, Xu, C. Liu, T. Matsui and C.Zhang (2018). Evolution of precipitation structure during the November DYNAMO MJO event: Cloud-resolving model inter-comparison and cross validation using radar observations. J. Geophys. Res., 123, https:/doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027775
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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