EUREC4ASUPPORT

Precipitation in trade cumuli within EUREC4A

20 January 2020 - 20 February 2020

Lead Scientist: Claudia Acquistapace

Observatory: AMF, OSC

Cumulus clouds have a massive impact on the Earth's radiation budget and the water cycle, yet we still don't know how they will respond to climate change. The field campaign EUREC4A, which will take place from 01/20/2020 to 02/20/2020 in the Atlantic Ocean near Barbados, has the goal of understanding the impact of the large-scale dynamics and thermodynamics of cumulus clouds’ life cycle. The field campaign "PRECipitation in TRAde Cumuli within EUREC4A” (PREC-TRAC) is designed as a complementary study to the EUREC4A measurement campaign. PREC-TRAC will focus on the investigation of precipitating cumuli, to understand what triggers precipitation formation and how, as well as which factors foster precipitation development. Such advanced observations will constitute a unique data set for LES model evaluation, especially for the evaluation of microphysical schemes of autoconversion with observations. This research will exploit the potential of the skewness of the cloud radar Doppler spectrum, which is capable of detecting the onset of precipitation in a cloud. The core of PREC-TRAC resides in the deployment of the second ARM Mobile Facility (AMF2) stabilization platform on the Maria S. Merian research vessel, which is essential for the collection of skewness observations from W-band cloud radar on the ship. The entire EUREC4A field campaign, with the added value of stabilized W-band radar observations on the Maria S. Merian, will provide data products from a strategic location in the trade winds and will be useful for model evaluations in the years to come.