Trade Cumulus Observations

Abstract

The first systematic series of observations in trade cumulus was carried out in the 1950s and 1960s by the Woods Hole Group (Riehl et al. 1951), followed by the National Hurricane Research Project (Brown 1959; Simpson, 1983a), who were attempting to determine the basic dynamical structure of the clouds and to document the evolution of warm rain. They were followed by large-scale boundary-layer experiments combining satellite, ship, and aircraft observations {the Atlantic Tradewind Experiment (ATEX) (Augstein and Ostapoff 1974), the Barbados Oceanographic and Meteorological Experiment (BOMEX) (Holland and Rasmussen 1973), and two experiments focused on the Hawaiian rainbands [the Joint Hawaii Warm Rain Project (JHWRP) (1985) and the Hawaiian Rainband Project (HaRP) (1991)]}. In addition, several individual observers (Takahashi 1977, 1981; Takahashi et al. 1989; Warner 1955, 1969, 1970b, 1971, 1973b, 1977) contributed very detailed and systematic aircraft studies of trade-wind cumulus. Many of these measurements are summarized and discussed in the reviews by Simpson (1983a,b,c). In this chapter we synthesize the data collected on the structure of the trade-wind sounding and the spatial and temporal distributions of dynamic, thermodynamic, and microphysical properties of the individual clouds and cloud clusters.