The death of an altocumulus cloud

What causes altocumulus clouds to decay? To address this question, the authors examine an observational case study of a mid‐level cloud that was measured during the Complex Layered Cloud Experiments (CLEX). The budget of liquid water reveals that the cloud was not dissipated by fallout of precipitat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGeophysical research letters Vol. 28; no. 13; pp. 2609 - 2612
Main Authors Larson, Vincent E., Fleishauer, Robert P., Kankiewicz, J. Adam, Reinke, Donald L., Vonder Haar, Thomas H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington, DC Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.2001
American Geophysical Union
Subjects
Cloud physics
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Meteorology
Case study
Water cloud
Altocumulus
Lifetime
Cooling
Cloud physics
Entrainment
Radiative transfer
Water balance
Subsidence(atmosphere)
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Summary:What causes altocumulus clouds to decay? To address this question, the authors examine an observational case study of a mid‐level cloud that was measured during the Complex Layered Cloud Experiments (CLEX). The budget of liquid water reveals that the cloud was not dissipated by fallout of precipitation. Rather, the largest contributor to decay of liquid water was subsidence drying. The strong link between subsidence and cloud lifetime is an important difference between altocumuli and boundary layer clouds. The net effect of radiative transfer on our cloud is unclear: liquid water was directly increased by radiative cooling, but this was offset by radiatively induced entrainment drying.
Bibliography:istex:F28C40BEAD31484069CBB5A58D1148503BC060BC
ark:/67375/WNG-WHX53KJL-Q
ArticleID:2001GL013031
ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0094-8276
1944-8007
DOI:10.1029/2001GL013031