PNNL

Abstract

To better understand the behavior of quasi-equilibrium based convective parameterizations at higher resolution, we use a diagnostic frame- work to examine the resolution-dependence of sub grid-scale vertical trans-port of moist static energy as parameterized by the Zhang-McFarlane convection parameterization (ZM). Grid-scale input to ZM is supplied by coarsening output from cloud resolving model (CRM) simulations onto sub-domains ranging in size from 8 _ 8 to 256 _ 256 km2. Then the ZM based parameterization of vertical transport of moist static energy for scales smaller than the sub-domain size (w0h0 ZM) are compared to those directly calculated from the CRM simulations (w0h0CRM) for different sub-domain sizes. The overall strength of w0h0CRM decreases by more than half as the sub-domain size decreases from 128 to 8 km across while w0h0 ZM decreases with sub-domain size only for strong convection cases and increases for weaker cases. The resolution dependence of w0h0 ZM is determined by the positive-denite change rate of grid-scale convective available potential energy (CAPE) in the convective quasi-equilibrium (QE) closure. Further analysis shows the change rate of actual grid-scale CAPE (before taking the positive definite value) and w0h0CRM behave very similarly as the sub-domain size changes because they are both tied to grid-scale advective tendencies. We can improve the resolution dependence of w0h0ZM significantly by averaging the grid-scale change rate of CAPE over an appropriately large area surrounding each sub-domain before taking its positive definite value. Even though the overall strength of w0h0CRM decreases with increasing resolution, its variability increases dramatically. w0h0ZM can capture neither the magnitude nor the pattern of this variability at relatively high resolutions (8 or 16 km grid spacing), suggesting the need for stochastic treatment of convection at these scales.