Development and structure of winter monsoon cloud clusters on 10 December 1978.

Abstract

Data from the Winter Monsoon Experiment (WMONEX) are used to study cloud clusters that occurred over the South China Sea on 10 December 1978. These clusters underwent life cycles in which they began as groups of intense convective cells and then developed into mesoscale systems consisting partly of convective cells and partly of stratiform precipitation. In the cellular regions of clusters, ice particle concentrations (at the 9 km or -17oC level) were found to be of the order of hundreds per liter, local convective updrafts of 4-17 m s-1 were observed, and the dominant ice-particle growth mechanism appeared to be riming.-from Authors