The tropical water and energy cycles in a cumulus ensemble model. Part I: equilibrium climate

Abstract

In Part I of this paper, the primary focus is on the water and heat budgets of the control experiment, which is designed to simulate the convective-radiative equilibrium response of the model to an imposed vertical velocity and a fixed sea surface temperature at 28°C. The simulated atmosphere is conditionally unstable below the freezing level and close to neutral above the freezing level. The equilibrium water budget shows that the total moisture source, Ms, which is contributed by surface evaporation (0.24 Ms) and the large-scale advection (0.76 Ms), all converts to mean surface precipitation P̄s. Most of Ms is transported vertically in convective regions where much of the condensate is generated and falls to surface (0.68 P̄s). -from Authors