The growing usage of cloud resolving model (CRM or cloud ensemble model-CEM) in recent years can be credited to its inclusion of crucial and physically relatively realistic features such as explicit cloud-scale dynamics, sophisticated microphysical processes, and explicit cloud-radiation interaction. On the other hand, impacts of the environmental conditions (for example, the large-scale wind fields, heat and moisture advections, as well as sea surface temperature) on the convective system can also be plausibly investigated using the CRMs with imposed explicit forcing.

In this paper, by basically using a 2D and 3D Goddard Cumulus Ensemble (GCE) model, three distinct studies on tropical convective systems are briefly presented. Each of these studies serves a special goal as well as uses a different approach. In the first study, which uses more of an idealized approach, the respective impacts of the large-scale horizontal wind shear and surface fluxes on the modeled tropical quasi-equilibrium states of temperature and water vapor are examined. In this 2D study, an interesting relation found between the quasi-equilibrium temperature and water vapor fields based on both model results and observations will be presented. For the second study, a handful of real tropical episodes (TRMM Kwajalein Experiment - KWAJEX, 1999; TRMM South China Sea Monsoon Experiment - SCSMEX, 1998) have been simulated such that several major atmospheric characteristics such as the rainfall amount and its associated stratiform contribution are investigated. In this study, the observed large-scale heat and moisture advections are continuously applied to the 2D and 3D model. The modeled cloud generated from such an approach is termed "continuously forced convection" or "continuous large-scale forced convection". A third study, which focuses on the respective impacts of atmospheric components on upper ocean heat and salt budgets, will be presented in the end. Unlike the two previous studies, this study employs the 3D GCE-simulated diabatic source terms (using TOGA COARE observations) - radiation (longwave and shortwave), surface fluxes (sensible and latent heat, and wind stress), and precipitation as input for the ocean mixed-layer (OML) model.