What Does Convective Organization Look Like in a GCM?

Organized convective systems have a profound impact on rainfall across the tropics and transport tremendous amounts of heat, moisture, and momentum in the vertical, significantly impacting weather and climate. But how well can we represent organized tropical convection in global climate models (GCMs)? This presentation will demonstrate the applicability of well-defined metrics of organized convection in both observations and GCMs. The metrics are based on the assumptions that organized convective systems are big and long-lasting and exhibit large rain amounts, enhanced rainfall in the morning and elevated heating profile structures. This presentation will also compare convective and large-scale precipitation physics in GCMs to our canonical understanding of convective and stratiform rainfall processes common in most mesoscale convective systems.