Extended Abstract (284K)6B.4
Spectral retrieval of latent heating profiles from TRMM PR data: Comparison of look-up tables
Shoichi Shige, Japan Exploration Agency, Tokyo, Japan; and Y. N. Takayabu, W. K. Tao, D. E. Johnson, and C. L. Shie
The primary goal of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) is to use the information about distributions of precipitation to determine the four dimensional (i.e., temporal and spatial) patterns of latent heating over the whole tropical region. The Spectral Latent Heating (SLH) algorithm has been developed to estimate latent heating profiles for the TRMM Precipitation Radar (PR) with a cloud-resolving model (CRM) by Shige et al. (2003, submitted to J. Appl. Meteor.). The method uses PR information [precipitation top height (PTH), precipitation rate at the melting level, rain rate and type] to select the heating profiles in look-up table. The look-up table is produced from the CRM simulations in which large-scale forcing derived from TOGA-COARE data are used.
For global applications, the universality of the look-up table is examined, performing consistency checks. We reconstruct heating profiles from CRM-simulated parameters (i.e. PTH, precipitation rate at the melting level, rain rate and type) with the TOGA-COARE table and compare them to CRM-simulated "true" heating profiles, which are computed directly the model thermodynamic equation. The GATE and SCSMEX periods are used for consistency check. The consistency checks show that TOGA-COARE table produces poorer agreement for SCSMEX than GATE due to the two reasons. First, convection has "oceanic" characteristics for the TOGA-COARE and GATE cases, while it has "continental" characteristics for the SCSMEX case. Second, there are differences in the stratiform cooling shapes, due to differences in the location of the rear inflow. Possible solutions for the algorithm improvement will be presented at the conference.
Session 6B, Convection, waves, and precipitation IV
Tuesday, 4 May 2004, 10:15 AM-11:45 AM, Napoleon I Room
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