Martin Singh

Senior Lecturer, School of Earth, Atmosphere & Environment, Monash University

Animations of simulations of convection

As part of my PhD research I have performed simulations of radiative-convective equilibrium at a range of surface temperatures using the model CM1, maintained by George Bryan of NCAR. Here I have placed some animations that show how the behavior of clouds change as the surface temperature is varied. Click on a thumbnail on the right to see an animation showing different properties of the simulations.

Surface air temperature and clouds


The gray contour is an iso-surface of cloud water content (including hydrometeors), while the colors are the near-surface temperature. The sea-surface temperature is fixed at 15°C (top), 29°C (middle) and 35°C (bottom).

The simulations are performed over a domain of size 160x160 km with a horizontal grid-spacing of 500 m. There are 64 vertical levels, with grid-spacing increasing from 100 m near the surface to 500 m in the mid-troposphere. Full radiative transfer is used, and there is no large-scale forcing.