September 20 case
Description
- Clear skies, transitioning to shallow cumulus
- G1 sampled from 1009 to 1249 LT
Central Facility sounding
Early morning
- CAPE: 249.5 J/kg, CIN: -506.8 J/kg, LCL: 971.59 hPa, LFC: 538.65 hPa
- An inversion but mostly unstable layer above 950 hPa
- Moist boundary layer topped by dry troposphere
Around noon
- CAPE: 3705.5 J/kg, CIN: 0.0 J/kg, LCL: 806.38 hPa, LFC: 772.19 hPa
- The surface warmed up by more than 15 °C, producing a large CAPE
CTP-HIlow diagram
- ERA5 suggests all areas within the domain have unstable atmosphere between 900 and 700 hPa levels (CTP > 120 J/kg) and some areas have sufficient moisture to initiate moist convection (HIlow below 15 K). The relatively dry atmosphere (difficult to lower LFC) indicates strong sensible heat flux would make it more conducive to initiate moist convection by raising PBL top more rapidly.
MODIS Terra image and G1 flight routes
GOES visible reflectance snap shots from late morning to afternoon
GOES vs WRF timeseries comparison from late morning to afternoon
Inner-domain average of short-wave reflectance
Comparing WRF (ratio of SWUPT/SWDNT) and GOES (post-processed to 5-km grid over SGP)
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Fraction of non-missing data across the inner domain
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Inner-domain average SW reflectance
Inner-domain average Liquid Water Path
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Fraction of non-missing data across the inner domain
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Inner-domain average LWP
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Inner-domain average cloud fraction (fraction of grid columns with LWP > 1.0 g/m2)
