The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E)

Abstract

SummaryConvective processes play a critical role in the Earth's energy balance through the redistribution of heat and moisture in the atmosphere and subsequent impacts on the hydrologic cycle. Global observation and accurate representation of these processes in numerical models is vital to improving our current understanding and future simulations of Earth's climate system. Despite improvements in computing power, current operational weather and global climate models are unable to resolve the natural temporal and spatial scales that are associated with convective and stratiform precipitation processes; therefore, they must turn to parameterization schemes to represent these processes. In turn, the physical basis for these parameterization schemes needs to be evaluated for general application under a variety of atmospheric conditions. Analogously, space-based remote sensing algorithms designed to retrieve related cloud and precipitation information for use in hydrological, climate, and numerical weather prediction applications often rely on physical "parameterizations" that reliably translate indirectly related instrument measurements to the physical quantity of interest (e.g., precipitation rate). Importantly, both spaceborne retrieval algorithms and model convective parameterization schemes traditionally rely on field campaign data sets as a basis for evaluating and improving the physics of their respective approaches.The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) will take place in central Oklahoma during the April-May 2011 period. The experiment is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission Ground Validation (GV) program. The field campaign leverages the unprecedented observing infrastructure currently available in the central United States, combined with an extensive sounding array, remote sensing and in situ aircraft observations, NASA GPM ground validation remote sensors, and new ARM instrumentation purchased with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding. The overarching goal is to provide the most complete characterization of convective cloud systems, precipitation, and the environment that has ever been obtained, providing constraints for model cumulus parameterizations and space-based rainfall retrieval algorithms over land that have never before been available. Several different components of convective cloud and precipitation processes tangible to both the convective parameterization and precipitation retrieval algorithm problem are targeted, such as preconvective environment and convective initiation, updraft/downdraft dynamics, condensate transport and detrainment, precipitation and cloud microphysics, spatial and temporal variability of precipitation, influence on the environment and radiation, and a detailed description of the large-scale forcing.MC3E will use a new multi-scale ...

Comparison of Vaisala radiosondes RS41 and RS92 at the ARM Southern Great Plains site

“…One important component of the measurements at each of these sites is the routine launching of radiosondes two-four times per day, resulting in more than 5000 launches per year. During this period the ARM program has used Vaisala radiosondes as part of regular operations and intensive operational periods (e.g., Ghan et al, 2000;Xu et al, 2002;Xie et al, 2005;Miller et al, 2007;Jensen et al, , 2016. The RS92 radiosonde is the current standard at all of the ARM sites and has been in use since 2005.…”

The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) sounding network: operations, processing and analysis

“…The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E; Jensen et al, 2010) was a joint field campaign between the US Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program (Mather and Voyles, 2013;Ackerman and Stokes, 2003;Stokes and Schwartz, 1994; http://www.arm.gov) and NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement Mission's (GPM) Ground Validation Program (Hou et al, 2014; http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GPM/ main/). It took place from 22 April through 6 June 2011 centered at the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) Facility in north-central Oklahoma.…”

Evaluation of double-moment representation of ice hydrometeors in bulk microphysical parameterization: comparison between WRF numerical simulations and UND-Citation data during MC3E

“…With the overarching goal to provide the most complete characterization dataset for convective cloud systems, precipitation, and their environment as well as the representation of cumulus clouds in computer models that has never before been available, the campaign leveraged the largest observing infrastructure currently available with an extensive sounding array, remote sensing and in situ aircraft observations (Jensen et al 2010). Among these data collected during the field campaign, the University of North Dakota Citation (UND-Citation) dataset provides measurements of hydrometeor distributions with hydrometeor properties, such as ice particle number concentration in specific diameter bins and ice water content inferred from the particle distributions.…”