Data · dataset · 2026
Observational evidence that radiative heating modifies the life cycle of tropical anvil clouds
Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research
A variety of satellite and ground-based observations are used to study how diurnal variations of cloud radiative heating affect the life cycle of anvil clouds over the tropical western Pacific Ocean.
Description
High clouds thicker than 2 km experience longwave heating at cloud base, longwave cooling at cloud top, and shortwave heating at cloud top. The shortwave and longwave effects have similar magnitudes during midday, but only the longwave effect is present at night, so high clouds experience a substantial diurnal cycle of radiative heating.
Furthermore, anvil clouds are more persistent or laterally expansive during daytime. This cannot be explained by variations of convective intensity or geographic patterns of convection, suggesting that shortwave heating causes anvil clouds to persist longer or spread over a larger area. It is then investigated if shortwave heating modifies anvil development by altering turbulence in the cloud.
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According to one theory, radiative heating drives turbulent overturning within anvil clouds that can be sufficiently vigorous to cause ice nucleation in the updrafts, thereby extending the cloud lifetime. High-frequency air motionand ice-crystal number concentration are shown tobe inversely related near cloud top, however. This suggests that turbulence depletes or disperses ice crystals at a faster rate than it nucleates them, so another mechanism must cause the diurnal variation of anvil clouds.
It is hypothesized that radiative heating affects anvil development primarily by inducing a mesoscale circulation that offsets gravitational settling of cloud particles.
Links
Get the data
- Publisher page n2t.org/ark:/85065/d75b05vd ↗
documentation · download · from data ucar edu
Where it is published
- data.ucar.edu /dataset/observational-evidence-that-radiative-heating-modifies… ↗
National Center for Atmospheric Research dataset page
landing page · from data ucar edu
Catalogue records · 1
- CKAN API data.ucar.edu/api/3/action/package_show?id=a9311510-779d-4f6a-a238-c54b1e322… ↗
metadata API · from data ucar edu
Topics
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Climate change science 72%
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Center for Atmospheric Research | a9311510-779d-4f6a-a238-c54b1e322dd2 | 12 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:group:3702 | enrichment · data ucar edu | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (72%) |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| created_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /notes |
| publication_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /title |
| updated_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 |