Revisiting the Entrainment Relationship of Convective Plumes: A Perspective From Global Observations
Hanii Takahashi, Zhengzhao Luo, Graeme L. Stephens
Abstract
Abstract Entrainment is an important process affecting convective transport and is a key parameter in convection modeling. For over half a century, an inverse relationship between entrainment rate ( λ ) and convective core size ( R ) has been used in modeling convective clouds. This short letter revisits the λ ‐ R relation using multiple years of CloudSat observations. Results show that the inverse relationship between λ and R is robust. However, they are not scaled by a simple constant. Global satellite observations provide some guidance for choosing the range of the scaling parameter. Further, our analysis shows that continental convective clouds tend to have smaller λ and larger R compared to oceanic convective clouds, suggesting that vertical mass transport by continental convection is more efficient. The satellite‐based study of the λ ‐ R relation has the potential to become a new diagnostic metric for assessing the representation of convection in weather and climate models.