Case: 07 August 2018

Summary

Stratocumulus deck with asymmetric coverage over the eastern half of the domain

Description

This was a multi-day stratocumulus event that featured a relatively asymmetric cloud field. This cloud deck was relatively continuous over the ENA main site and parts of the domain over and east of the Azores archipelago. Stratocumulus on August 6th (cloud echo tops to approximately 1.5 km AGL) exhibited signatures of subcloud precipitation and were thicker than those clouds observed on the following day. However, these clouds dissipated briefly over the ENA site around 16 UTC on August 6th. The clouds reformed by 21 UTC over the ENA main site, reforming as a thinner deck exhibiting weaker signatures of precipitation. This deck remained until approximately midday on August 7th. The cloud echo tops for this second stratocumulus interval over the ENA site were observed to gradually increase with time (from approximately 1.0 km to 1.5 km AGL).

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI. SACR. RLPROF-FEX

Critical period: 00:00-12:00

Thin stratocumulus over the ENA main site with a gradual increase to cloud top/base with time

Figure 62 True color afternoon MODIS AQUA image with overlaid LES domains. The image domain corresponds to the size of the model forcing domain.