Journal article
The fractal nature of clouds in global storm-resolving models
- Abstract:
- Clouds in observations are fractals: they show self-similarity across scales ranging from one to 1000 km. This includes individual storms and large-scale cloud structures typical of organised convection. It is not known whether global storm-resolving models reproduce the observed fractal scaling laws for clouds and organised convection. We compute the fractal dimension of clouds using Himawari satellite data and compare this to global storm-resolving model simulations completed as part of the DYAMOND intercomparison project. We find cloud fields in these simulations are indeed fractal, and reproduce the observed fractal dimension to within 10%. We find the fractal dimension is sensitive to the choice of boundary layer parametrisation scheme used in each model simulation, and not to the convection parametrisation as might have been expected.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 453.5KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1029/2021gl095746
Authors
- Publisher:
- American Geophysical Union
- Journal:
- Geophysical Research Letters More from this journal
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 23
- Article number:
- e2021GL095746
- Publication date:
- 2021-11-19
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-11-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1944-8007
- ISSN:
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0094-8276
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1211055
- Local pid:
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pubs:1211055
- Deposit date:
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2021-11-22
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Christensen and Driver.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- ©2021. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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