Estimates of the Vertical Profile of Entrainment Rate from Millimeter-wavelength Radar Observations

Mixing of environmental air with buoyant plumes has important implications on cloud life cycle and subsequent impacts on the atmospheric energy and water budgets. This mixing is notoriously difficult to measure, particularly from a remote sensing point of view. Here we introduce a technique using velocity profiles from an ARM vertically pointing millimeter-wavelength cloud radar and estimates of the cloud adiabaticity in order to estimate a vertical profile of entrainment rate for shallow cumulus clouds.