Precipitation, coverage and radiation of tropical deep convective systems observed from merged TRMM satellite data

This study uses measurements of January through August 1998 from multiple Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) sensors, namely Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES), TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS), to estimate rainfall rate, area coverage and radiative fluxes of tropical deep convective systems (DCS). This study finds that the cloud area coverage of DCSs increases with SST even the precipitation and rainfall efficiency are higher in warmer SST environments. The rate of change of the cloud area coverage obtained from TRMM data is about 7%/K. Besides the cloud area coverage, DCS cluster effective sizes also increase with precipitation. These changes of DCS properties could produce a negative radiative feedback for the earth's climate system due to strong reflection of DCS on shortwave radiation. These results have great potential in testing current cloud simulation models and general circulation model convection parameterizations.