Tempei Hashino

Intercomparison of cloud model simulations of Arctic mixed‐phase boundary layer clouds observed during SHEBA/FIRE‐ACE

An intercomparison of six cloud-resolving and large-eddy simulation models is presented. This case study is based on observations of a persistent mixed-phase boundary layer cloud gathered on 7 May, 1998 from the Surface Heat Budget of Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) and First ISCCP Regional Experiment - Arctic Cloud Experiment (FIRE-ACE). Ice nucleation is constrained in the simulations in a way that holds the ice crystal concentration approximately fixed, with two sets of sensitivity runs in addition to the baseline simulations utilizing different specified ice nucleus (IN) concentrations. All of the baseline and sensitivity simulations group into two distinct quasi-steady states associated with either persistent mixed-phase clouds or all-ice clouds after the first few hours of integration, implying the existence of multiple states for this case. These two states are associated with distinctly different microphysical, thermodynamic, and radiative characteristics. Most but not all of the models produce a persistent mixed-phase cloud qualitatively similar to observations using the baseline IN/crystal concentration, while small increases in the IN/crystal concentration generally lead to rapid glaciation and conversion to the all-ice state. Budget analysis indicates that larger ice deposition rates associated with increased IN/crystal concentrations have a limited direct impact on dissipation of liquid in these simulations. However, the impact of increased ice deposition is greatly enhanced by several interaction pathways that lead to an increased surface precipitation flux, weaker cloud top radiative cooling and cloud dynamics, and reduced vertical mixing, promoting rapid glaciation of the mixed-phase cloud for deposition rates in the cloud layer greater than about 122610 –5 gk g –1 s –1 for this case. These results indicate the critical importance of precipitation-radiative-dynamical interactions in simulating cloud phase, which have been neglected in previous fixed-dynamical parcel studies of the cloud phase parameter space. Large sensitivity to the IN/crystal concentration also suggests the need for improved understanding of ice nucleation and its parameterization in models.

Sampling Uncertainty and Confidence Intervals for the Brier Score and Brier Skill Score

Abstract For probability forecasts, the Brier score and Brier skill score are commonly used verification measures of forecast accuracy and skill. Using sampling theory, analytical expressions are derived to estimate their sampling uncertainties. The Brier score is an unbiased estimator of the accuracy, and an exact expression defines its sampling variance. The Brier skill score (with climatology as a reference forecast) is a biased estimator, and approximations are needed to estimate its bias and sampling variance. The uncertainty estimators depend only on the moments of the forecasts and observations, so it is easy to routinely compute them at the same time as the Brier score and skill score. The resulting uncertainty estimates can be used to construct error bars or confidence intervals for the verification measures, or perform hypothesis testing. Monte Carlo experiments using synthetic forecasting examples illustrate the performance of the expressions. In general, the estimates provide very reliable inf...

The spectral ice habit prediction system (SHIPS). Part II: Simulation of nucleation and depositional growth of polycrystals

Abstract This paper proposes a framework to predict polycrystals along with hexagonal monocrystals in a cloud-resolving model and discusses validity of the scheme and physical processes important for habit distribution by implementing 2D cloud-resolving simulations of an orographic winter storm. The vapor depositional growth is simulated based on a habit frequency map constructed in the laboratory and based on a predicted growth history under evolving atmospheric conditions. Differences brought by predicting polycrystals in spatial distribution were apparent, and sedimentation of polycrystals from middle and upper levels was significant. The immersion freezing process appeared to be a key process resulting in the creation of planar polycrystals, while the homogeneous freezing process was found important for columnar and irregular polycrystals. The ice nuclei (IN) concentration was shown to affect habit distribution by changing the supersaturation, tendency of the freezing nucleation processes, and sedimen...

The Spectral Ice Habit Prediction System (SHIPS). Part III: Description of the Ice Particle Model and the Habit-Dependent Aggregation Model

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to describe a numerical scheme of the Spectral Ice Habit Prediction System (SHIPS) that simulates the dependency of aggregation process explicitly on crystal habit and size in cloud-resolving models (CRMs). The sizes and shapes of ice crystals are known to modulate the aggregation process, which is a critical part of physical processes leading to precipitation in addition to vapor deposition and riming processes. A problem with conventional formulation of aggregation process in CRMs is that it is not designed to predict the aggregates’ properties based on the information on crystals. To simulate such dependency, SHIPS solves a quasi-stochastic model that describes growth tendency for a group of particles, together with particle property variables (PPVs) that carry information on habit and types of ice particles.SHIPS diagnoses the ice particle properties based on the PPVs for each mass bin at given a time and space, which are used to calculate the collision cross-secti...

On the Land-Ocean Contrast of Tropical Convection and Microphysics Statistics Derived from TRMM Satellite Signals and Global Storm-Resolving Models

A 14-year climatology of Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) collocated multi-sensor signal statistics reveal a distinct land-ocean contrast as well as geographical variability of precipitation type, intensity, and microphysics. Microphysics information inferred from the TRMM precipitation radar and Microwave Imager (TMI) show a large land-ocean contrast for the deep category, suggesting continental convective vigor. Over land, TRMM shows higher echo-top heights and larger maximum echoes, suggesting taller storms and more intense precipitation, as well as larger microwave scattering, suggesting the presence of more/larger frozen convective hydrometeors. This strong land-ocean contrast in deep convection is invariant over seasonal and multi-year time-scales. Consequently, relatively short-term simulations from two global storm-resolving models can be evaluated in terms of their land-ocean statistics using the TRMM Triple-sensor Three-step Evaluation via a satellite simulator. The models evaluated are the NASA Multi-scale Modeling Framework (MMF) and the Non-hydrostatic Icosahedral Cloud Atmospheric Model (NICAM). While both simulations can represent convective land-ocean contrasts in warm precipitation to some extent, near-surface conditions over land are relatively moisture in NICAM than MMF, which appears to be the key driver in the divergent warm precipitation results between the two models. Both the MMF and NICAM produced similar frequencies of large CAPE between land and ocean. The dry MMF boundary layer enhanced microwave scattering signals over land, but only NICAM had an enhanced deep convection frequency over land. Neither model could reproduce a realistic land-ocean contrast in in deep convective precipitation microphysics. A realistic contrast between land and ocean remains an issue in global storm-resolving modeling.

The Spectral Ice Habit Prediction System (SHIPS). Part IV: Box model simulations of the habit-dependent aggregation process

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to assess the prediction of particle properties of aggregates and particle size distributions with the Spectral Ice Habit Prediction System (SHIPS) and to investigate the effects of crystal habits on aggregation process. Aggregation processes of ice particles are critical to the understanding of precipitation and the radiative signatures of cloud systems. Conventional approaches taken in cloud-resolving models (CRMs) are not ideal to study the effects of crystal habits on aggregation processes because the properties of aggregates have to be assumed beforehand. As described in Part III, SHIPS solves the stochastic collection equation along with particle property variables that contain information about crystal habits and maximum dimensions of aggregates. This approach makes it possible to simulate properties of aggregates explicitly and continuously in CRMs according to the crystal habits.The aggregation simulations were implemented in a simple model setup, assuming sev...

Numerical Study of Motion and Stability of Falling Columnar Crystals

AbstractUnderstanding of the flow field and falling patterns of ice crystals is fundamental to cloud physics and radiative transfer, and yet the complex shape hampers a comprehensive understanding. In order to create better understanding of falling patterns of columnar crystals, this study utilizes a computational fluid dynamics package and explicitly simulates the motion as well as the flow fields. Three modes of patterns (i.e., strong damping, fluttering, and unstable modes) were identified in the space of inverse aspect ratio (q) and Reynolds number (Re). The boundary of stability depicts the “L” shape as found in a previous experimental study. This study newly found that the range of Re for stable motion increases with a decrease in q. Decomposition of hydrodynamic torques indicates that, for stable mode, the pressure and viscous torques acting on the lower prism faces counteract the rotation when the inclination angle becomes 0°. The unstable motion was attributed to the pressure torque acting on the...

A Numerical Study on the Attitudes and Aerodynamics of Freely Falling Hexagonal Ice Plates

The fall attitudes and the flow fields of falling hexagonal ice plates are studied by numerically solving the transient incompressible Navier‐Stokes equation for flow past ice plates and the body dynamics equations representing the 6-degrees-of-freedom motion that determine the position and orientation of the ice plates in response to the hydrodynamic force of the flow fields. The ice plates investigated are from 1 to 10mm in diameter, and the corresponding Reynolds number ranges from 46 to 974. The results indicate that the 1-mm plate generates a steady flow field and exhibits a steady motion, whereas the rest of the ice plates generate unsteady flow fields and exhibit unsteady motions, including horizontal translation, rotation, and axial oscillation.The horizontal translation is primarily determinedby the inclination due to oscillation. The pressure distributions around the falling plates are examined and discussed in association with the oscillation. The vortex structure in the wake of the plate is examined. Empirical formulas for fall speed, oscillation frequency, and drag coefficient are given. Potential impacts of the fall attitudes and flow characteristics on the microphysics of ice plates are discussed.

Idealized numerical experiments on the microphysical evolution of warm-type heavy rainfall

Recent satellite observations suggested that medium-depth heavy rain systems (i.e., warm-type heavy rainfall) were predominantly found in the Korean peninsula under moist-adiabatically near neutral conditions in contrast to the traditional view that deep convection induced by convective instability produced heavy rainfall (i.e., cold-type heavy rainfall). In order to examine whether a numerical model could explain the microphysical evolution of the warm-type as well as cold-type heavy rainfall, numerical experiments were implemented with idealized thermodynamic conditions. Under the prescribed humid and weakly unstable conditions, the warm-type experiments resulted in a lower storm height, earlier onset of precipitation, and heavier precipitation than was found for the cold-type experiments. The growth of ice particles and their melting process were important for developing cold-type heavy rainfall. In contrast, the collision and coalescence processes between liquid particles were shown to be the mechanism for increasing the radar reflectivity toward the surface in the storm core region for the warm-type heavy rainfall.

Evaluating Arctic cloud radiative effects simulated by NICAM with A-train

Evaluation of cloud radiative effects (CREs) in global atmospheric models is of vital importance to reduce uncertainties in weather forecasting and future climate projection. In this paper, we describe an effective way to evaluate CREs from a 3.5 km mesh global nonhydrostatic model by comparing it against A-train satellite data. The model is the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM), and its output is run through a satellite-sensor simulator (Joint Simulator for satellite sensors) to produce the equivalent CloudSat radar, CALIPSO lidar, and Aqua Clouds and the Earths Radiant Energy System (CERES) data. These simulated observations are then compared to real observations from the satellites. We focus on the Arctic, which is a region experiencing rapid climate change over various surface types. The NICAM simulation significantly overestimates the shortwave CREs at top of atmosphere and surface as large as 24 W m−2 for the month of June. The CREs were decomposed into cloud fractions and footprint CREs of cloud types that are defined based on the CloudSat-CALIPSO cloud top temperature and maximum radar reflectivity. It turned out that the simulation underestimates the cloud fraction and optical thickness of mixed-phase clouds due to predicting too little supercooled liquid and predicting overly large snow particles with too little mass content. This bias was partially offset by predicting too many optically thin high clouds. Offline sensitivity experiments, where cloud microphysical parameters, surface albedo, and single scattering parameters are varied, support the diagnosis. Aerosol radiative effects and nonspherical single scattering of ice particles should be introduced into the NICAM broadband calculation for further improvement.