The Contribution of Convection to the Stratospheric Water Vapor: The First Budget Using a Global Storm-Resolving Model

Abstract

The deepest convection on Earth injects water in the tropical stratosphere, but its contribution to the global stratospheric water budget remains uncertain. The Global Storm-Resolving Model ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic is used to simulate the moistening of the lower stratosphere for 40 days during boreal summer. The decomposition of the water vapor budget in the tropical lower stratosphere (TLS, 10°S–30°N, and 17–20 km altitude) indicates that the average moistening (+21 Tg) over the simulated 40-day period is the result of the combined effect of the vertical water vapor transport from the troposphere (+27 Tg), microphysical phase changes and subgrid-scale transport (+2 Tg), partly compensated by horizontal water vapor export (−8 Tg). The very deep convective systems, explicitly represented thanks to the employed 2.5 km grid spacing of the model, are identified using the very low Outgoing Longwave Radiation of their cold cloud tops. The water vapor budget reveals that the vertical transport, the sublimation and the subgrid-scale transport at their top contribute together to 11% of the water vapor mass input into the TLS.