It has become clear over the last couple of years that shallow cumulus convection over the subtropical oceans has a strong tendency to develop itself into a rich variety of spatial cloud structures. It is particular challenging to simulate these mesoscale cloud patterns. On the one hand, it requires turbulence resolving resolutions of 100 m to represent the vertical convective mixing processes...
In models, a local maximum of clear-sky radiative cooling in the lower troposphere often appears as a necessary condition for the development and persistence of convective organization. However, no robust understanding has been provided for the emergence and disappearance of lower-tropospheric cooling in the atmosphere. Here we propose a theoretical characterization of clear-sky radiative...
The diurnal variability of sea skin temperature (SST) is suspected to play an important role for convective organization above the tropical ocean, from driving cumulus congestus convection to triggering the active phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Recent cloud-resolving simulations demonstrate how imposed diurnal SST oscillations strongly impact mesoscale convective aggregation,...