Kinematic characteristics of RICO updrafts: comparisons with other tropical regions

Statistics of the kinematic characteristics of updrafts (average speed, maximum speed, width, mass flux) have been reported from several tropical regions, based on in situ airborne measurements of cumuli. These studies suggest that updrafts in many smaller precipitating tropical systems exhibit consistent characteristics (e.g. as a function of altitude). Since the microphysical structure of cumuli (e.g. drop size distributions) is closely related to their updrafts, if RICO updrafts follow a similar pattern as other tropical regions, their microphysical structures are likely to be similar, at least for tropical regions with similar CCN concentrations. In this paper we compute the kinematic characteristics of RICO updrafts and compare them with previous studies. We also explore the similarities between in situ droplet concentrations found in RICO with those from recent airborne tropical studies.