A Large Eddy Simulation Intercomparison Study of Shallow Cumulus Convection

This paper reports an intercomparison study on undisturbed trade wind cumulus convection under steadystate conditions as observed during the Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment (BOMEX) with 10 large eddy simulation (LES) models. A main objective of this study is to obtain a quantitative assessment of the quality of the turbulent dynamics for this type of boundary layer clouds as produced by the different LES codes. A 6-h simulation shows excellent model-to-model agreement of the observed vertical thermodynamical structure, reasonable agreement of variances and turbulent fluxes, and good agreement of quantities conditionally sampled within the model clouds, such as cloud cover, liquid water,…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Award: 9985413
• UO
  University of Washington