Atmosphere

How do trade-wind clouds organize? This question has been one of the core motivators for the EUREC4A field campaign, because until recently the trade-wind clouds were mostly regarded as unorganized. Now it has become clear that this is rather the exception than the norm.

Clouds are a crucial component of the Earth system since they play a role in the energy balance by limiting the amount of energy entering and leaving the system.

How do wind and precipitation impact salinity? The relationship could be simplified by saying that more precipitation indicates fresh water entering the upper ocean, and as a consequence, the ocean becomes less salty. This relationship is observed near the equator in the place known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone ...

The EUREC4A field campaign took place in early 2020 in the downwind North Atlantic trade winds to study the connection between clouds, convection and circulation. Clouds of particular interest were shallow cumulus clouds that occur in different forms and arrangements.

The movie shows the 40-year evolution of low-frequency variability of the equatorial Kelvin waves in ERA5 reanalyses. The simulation was performed by the "Clouds and Tropical Circulation" group, Project A2, the Cluster of Excellence "Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” (CLICCS).

The visualization shows 3-D atmospheric Kelvin waves in daily ERA5 data filtered by MODES. The simulation was performed by the "Clouds and Tropical Circulation" group, Project A2, the Cluster of Excellence "Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” (CLICCS).

This animation shows a HD(CP)² ICON-LEM cloud simulation that was carried out on a 625m horizontal resolution domain centered over Germany.

Two animations show the temporal evolution of the following variables: cloud water, ice, rain, snow and graupel - and vertically integrated water vapor, respectively, for a 40-day 5km ICON Dyamond simulation.

The video shows a 3-D representation of the cyclone using a volumetric rendering of clouds, obtained as sum of cloud water and cloud ice, followed by streamlines coloured according to windspeed.

In this movie, the time period August 2013 to March 2014 is shown. It includes the typhoon season 2013 and winter storms over the North Atlantic and Western Europe.