Shallow cirrus convection – a source for ice supersaturation

Peter Spichtinger

doi:10.3402/tellusa.v66.19937

Shallow cirrus convection – a source for ice supersaturation

Tellus

Volume 66 (2014): Issue 1

By: Peter Spichtinger

Open Access

|Dec 2014

Abstract

The origin and persistence of high ice supersaturation is still not well understood. In this study, the impact of local dynamics as source for ice supersaturation inside cirrus clouds is investigated. Nucleation and growth of ice crystals inside potentially unstable layers in the tropopause region might lead to shallow convection inside (layered) cirrus clouds due to latent heat release. The intrinsic updraught inside convective cells constitutes a dominant but transient source for ice supersaturation. A realistic case of shallow cirrus convection is investigated using radiosonde data, meteorological analyses and large-eddy simulations of cirrus clouds. The simulations corroborate the existence of ice supersaturation inside cirrus clouds as a transient phenomenon. Ice supersaturation is frequent, but determined by the life cycle of convective cells in shallow cirrus convection. Cirrus clouds driven by shallow cirrus convection are mostly not in thermodynamic equilibrium; they are usually in a subsaturated or supersaturated state.

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