Comparing causal pathways in precipitating and non-precipitating stratocumulus clouds

Warm marine boundary-layer clouds play critical roles in climate and synoptic scales by impacting the radiation and moisture budgets. Understanding how these clouds form and are sustained requires understanding aerosol-cloud-environment interactions. However, with interactions between microphysical, meteorological, and synoptic-scale processes, detailed understanding of aerosol-cloud-environment interactions remains illusive. This is even more prominent when comparing precipitating and non-precipitating clouds.

To identify and better understand these interactions, we apply a novel nonlinear causal framework to precipitating and non-precipitating warm marine boundary-layer clouds and compare the resulting causal pathways. New in our methodology is that we not only identify which processes are important drivers for others, but also how different drivers act together. This allows us to identify mediating, competing, buffering, and cooperative effects among the drivers. Using this new analysis tool, we will highlight similarities and differences in the causal interactions in precipitating and non-precipitating clouds.