Turbulence in the Marine Boundary Layer and Air Motions below Stratocumulus Clouds at the ARM Eastern North Atlantic Site

Marine stratocumulus clouds are intimately coupled to the turbulence in the boundary layer and drizzle is known to be ubiquitous within them. Six years of data collected at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement’s (ARM) Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) site are utilized to characterize turbulence in the marine boundary layer and air motions below stratocumulus clouds. Profiles of variance of vertical velocity binned by wind direction (wdir) yielded that the boundary layer measurements are affected by the island when the wdir is between 90° and 310° (measured clockwise from the north from where air is coming). Data collected during the marine conditions (wdir < 90° or wdir > 310°) showed that the variance of vertical velocity was higher during the winter months than during the summer months because of higher cloudiness, wind speeds, and surface fluxes. During marine conditions the variance of vertical velocity and cloud fraction exhibited a distinct diurnal cycle with higher values during the nighttime than during the daytime. Detailed analysis of 32 cases of drizzling marine stratocumulus clouds showed that, for a similar amount of radiative cooling at the cloud top, within the subcloud layer 1) drizzle increasingly falls within downdrafts with increasing rain rates, 2) the strength of the downdrafts increases with increasing rain rates, and 3) the correlation between vertical air motion and rain rate is highest in the middle of the subcloud layer. The results presented herein have implications for climatological and model evaluation studies conducted at the ENA site, along with efforts to accurately represent drizzle–turbulence interactions in a range of atmospheric models.