Case: 28 March 2019

Summary

Closed cell stratocumulus deck over a relatively narrow spatial coverage band

Description

This event featured a continuous stratocumulus deck that formed over a relatively narrow (approximately 200 km east-west) band. This deck remained over the Azores region throughout the day. Low-level winds were light and from the north. The stratocumulus deck cloud top height was at roughly 1.7 km AGL throughout this event, having radar signatures of subcloud precipitation prominently before 09 UTC. This narrow cloud deck dissipated briefly just after 19 UTC, though it quickly reformed over similar locations within an hour or two.

Available assets

Standard ARM profiling assets, SEVIRI. RLPROF-FEX. Additional ENA GNSS ground station radiosonde launch (0330 UTC)

Critical period: 09:00-15:00

Continuous non- or lightly precipitating stratocumulus deck

True color MODIS AQUA — Figure 63 True color afternoon MODIS AQUA image with overlaid LES domains. The image domain corresponds to the size of the model forcing domain.