Making Sense of Clouds with the Transilient Matrix
May 03, 2012
David Romps
Hosted by Sue van den Heever
Abstract
Clouds transport water, trace gases, and momentum through the atmosphere in a way that is not at all "diffusive". Instead, clouds transport these things in a "transilient" way, jumping across whole layers of the atmosphere. As a result, the convective tendencies of water, dust, trace gases, momentum, etc. are most accurately diagnosed -- and modeled -- using the so-called "transilient matrix" as a framework.New techniques allow us to diagnose these matrices from large-eddy simulations of clouds, and the resulting matrices are yielding new insights into how convection works.