Evidence of Invigoration in Warm Cloud Dynamics due to Precipitation Suppression

Aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions have large-scale implications on the global energy and hydrological balances. Understanding how aerosols impact cloud’s radiative properties and precipitation characteristics is critical to future climate scenarios. Utilizing years of collocated satellite observations from the NASA A-Train constellation, along with the Wisconsin Algorithm for Latent heating and Rainfall Using Satellites (WALRUS), the impact of precipitation suppression on warm clouds is assessed. Observations are constrained by the cloud’s liquid water path and local environment in order to reduce sources of covariance. A-Train observations with WALRUS derived latent heating profiles allow a unique glimpse into the latent heating characteristics of suppressed warm clouds, which so far has only been evaluated with models. Precipitation suppression is shown to increase and redistribute the liquid water throughout a cloud, leading to increased latent heating at all levels of the cloud. The relation between modifications of the latent heating profile and in-cloud dynamics will be shown. Suppressed clouds exhibit more latent heating, which amplifies in-cloud vertical motion. This is shown to elevate the cloud top in certain cases. If the magnitude and structure of latent heating in precipitating warm clouds is affected by aerosol loading, it may imply these same effects could be seen in the warm portion of convective clouds.