Shallow cumuliform and stratocumulus convection is important to both weather and climate. Indeed recent work suggests that direct representations of these cloud regimes are a major point of departure among climate-model representations of climate sensitivity, and a principal means by which the atmospheric aerosol imprints itself on larger-scale circulations. Unfortunately our understanding of marine boundary layer clouds is limited, in part, by our ability to simulate them with great confidence or fidelity. The paramount goal of this interdisciplinary project is to combine the expertise from numerics, modeling of front dynamics, and turbulence theory to develop rational representations of stratocumulus for use in climate and other forms of large-scale models.

[1] Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B., Schmidt, H., Peters, N. (2009). Buoyancy reversal in cloud-top mixing layers, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 135: 963-978, DOI: 10.1002/qj.417

[2] Mellado, J.P., Schmidt, H., Stevens, B., Peters, N., (2009). DNS of the turbulent cloud-top mixing layer, Advances in Turbulence XII, Springer Proceedings in Physics, 132, 2009, pp 401-404

[2] Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B., Schmidt, H., Peters, N. (2010). Two-fluid formulation of the cloud-top mixing layer for direct numerical simulation, Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00162-010-0182-x

[3] Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B., Schmidt, H., Peters, N. (2010). Probability density functions in the cloud-top mixing layer, New Journal of Physics, 12, 085010.

[4] Dietze, E., Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B., Schmidt, H. (2012). Study of low-order numerical effects in the two-dimensional cloud-top mixing layer, Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00162-012-0263-0

[5] Schmidt, H., Kerstein, A.R., Nédélec, R., Wunsch, S., Sayler, B. J. (2012) Numerical simulation of a laboratory analog of radiatively induced cloud-top entrainment, Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00162- 012-0288-4

[6] J. P. Mellado, B. Stevens, H. Schmidt (2012) Mean shear effects at the cloud top boundary, XXIII ICTAM, 1924 August 2012, Beijing, China

[7] Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B., Schmidt, H. (2013). Wind shear and buoyancy reversal at the stratocumulus top, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 71, 1040-1057

[8] Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B, Schmidt, H. (2014). Wind shear and evaporative cooling at the stratocumulus top, 7th International Scientific Conference on the Global Water and Energy Cycle, 14-17 July 2014, The Hague, The Netherlands

[9] Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B, Schmidt, H. (2014). Wind shear and evaporative cooling at the stratocumulus top, 21st Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence 9-13 June 2014, Leeds, United Kingdom

[10] Dietze, E., Schmidt, H., Stevens, B., Mellado, J.P. (2014). Controlling entrainment in the smoke cloud using level set-based front tracking. CFMIP/EUCLIPSE Meeting on Cloud Processes and Climate Feedbacks 2014, Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands

[11] Dietze, E., Mellado, J.P., Stevens, B., Schmidt, H. (2015). Controlling entrainment in stratocumulus clouds using level set-based front tracking, Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 23, 661-674