A Lagrangian perspective on the lifecycle and cloud radiative effect of deep convective clouds over Africa

The anvil clouds of tropical deep convection have large radiative effects in both the shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) spectra with the average magnitudes of both over 100 W m.sup.-2 . Despite this, due to the opposite sign of these fluxes, the net average of the anvil cloud radiative effect (CRE) over the tropics is observed to be neutral. Research into the response of the anvil CRE to climate change has primarily focused on the feedbacks of anvil cloud height and anvil cloud area, in particular regarding the LW feedback. However, tropical deep convection over land has a strong diurnal cycle which may couple with the shortwave component of the anvil cloud radiative effect. As this diurnal cycle is poorly represented in climate models it is vital to gain a better understanding of how its changes impact the anvil CRE.