The group’s intercomparisons give participating research teams a common atmospheric case to simulate, allowing them to examine why their models produced different clouds, rainfall, and patterns of heating and moistening. These are specific, observation-based exercises: one group examined tropical oceanic convection during TOGA COARE, while another used measurements collected at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program’s Southern Great Plains site.
Researchers compare detailed cloud-resolving models, which simulate individual convective structures, and single-column models, which test the simplified physics used within larger atmospheric models. Comparing their results with observations helped expose weaknesses in how those models represented cloud processes. appconv.metoffice.gov.uk
The comparisons investigate particular sources of disagreement. In the TOGA COARE exercise, substantial differences in simulated heating and moistening prompted a separate examination of radiation calculations and exchanges of heat and moisture between the ocean and atmosphere. We test these model components against a prescribed atmospheric state, making their differences easier to isolate.
These models examine the daily development of deep convection over land and how its development depended on the atmosphere’s moisture profile. The broader purpose is to turn discrepancies into improvements: understanding which physical assumptions cause models to diverge, using that knowledge to improve the treatment of convective clouds in weather forecasting and climate simulation. ntrs.nasa.gov