Thermal aspect of the diurnal variation of tropical convective and stratiform rainfall

The diurnal variation of radiation plays a key role in determining the diurnal variations of tropical oceanic con- vective and stratiform rainfall, and the examination of such a relationship requires a direct link between the radiation term in a heat budget and the surface rain rate in a cloud budget. Thus, the thermally related surface rainfall budgets derived from the combination of cloud and heat budgets are analysed with two-dimensional equilibrium cloud-resolving model simulation data to study the effects of sea surface temperature （SST） and cloud radiative, and microphysical processes on the diurnal variations of convective and stratiform rainfall. The results show that the increase in SST, the inclusion of diurnal variation of SST and the exclusion of cloud radiative processes increase negative diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over rainfall-free regions during the nighttime through changing the vertical structures of diurnal anomaly of radiation in the troposphere. The strengthened negative diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over rainfall- free regions enhance positive diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over convective regions, which intensifies the positive diurnal anomaly of convective rainfall. The exclusion of microphysical effects of ice clouds increases the negative diurnal anomaly of heat divergence over rainfall-free regions during the nighttime through reducing latent heat; this appears to enhance the positive diurnal anomaly of heat divergence over raining stratiform regions, and thus stratiform rMnfall.

Thermal Convection in a Tilted Rectangular Cell with Aspect Ratio 0.5

Thermal convection in a three-dimensional tilted rectangular cell with aspect ratio 0.5 is studied using direct nu- merical simulations within both Oberbeck-Boussinesq （OB） approximation and strong non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq （NOB） effects. The considered Rayleigh numbers Ra range from 105 to 107, the working fluid is air at 30OK, and the corresponding Prandtl number Pr is 0.71. Within the OB approximation, it is found that there exist multiple states for Ra = 105 and hysteresis for Ra = 106. For a relatively small tilt angle/3, the large-scale circulation can either orient along one of the the vertical diagonal planes （denoted by Ma mode） or orient parallel to the front wall （denoted by Mp mode）. Which of the two modes transports heat more efficiently is not definitive, and it depends on the Rayleigh number Ra. For/Ta = 107 and β = 0°, the time-averaged flow field contains four rolls in the upper half and lower half of the cell, respectively, Md and Mp modes only developing in tilted cells. By investigating NOB effects in tilted convection for fixed/Ta = 106, it is found that the NOB effects on the Nusselt number Nu, the Reynolds number Re and the central temperature Tc for different β ranges are different. NOB effects can either increase or decrease Nu, Re and Tc when β is varied.