The formation of precipitation is a key process in the trade wind region to maintain a scattered shallow cumulus regime by limiting the growth of the boundary layer and of convective clouds. This effect partly determines how shallow clouds will respond to global warming and whether these clouds accelerate und reduce the climate change. The influencing factors controlling whether a shallow cloud starts to precipitate are yet not fully unraveled, in particular due to a lack of comprehensive observations. The measurement campaign EUREC4A (Elucidating the Role of Cloud-Circulation Coupling in Climate) using the research aircraft HALO will overcome this limitation and provide simultaneously observations of cloud macro- and microphysical properties and the condensate load at the sub kilometer scale as well as estimates of the large scale dynamics and underlying energy and moisture fluxes. EUREC4A will take place at January and February 2020 and explore clouds eats of Barbados. The proposers are part of the international team, which initiated this campaign, and will operate the "HALO microwave package" (HAMP) consisting of microwave radiometers and a cloud radar onboard of HALO. As basis to address the science question we will develop of synergistic cloud and rain retrievals and the extension of a segmented cloud database including also the preceding NARVAL campaigns. This data set is used both for satellite evaluation and to evaluate the next generation of atmospheric models with grid spacing between 100m and a few kilometers.
DFG Programme
Infrastructure Priority Programmes
