Scheduled Downtime
On Friday 21 April 2023 @ 5pm MT, this website will be down for maintenance and expected to return online the morning of 24 April 2023 at the latest

Condensation Heating

This post was from a previous version of the WRF&MPAS-A Support Forum. New replies have been disabled and if you have follow up questions related to this post, then please start a new thread from the forum home page.

wallis

Member
Are there any microphysics/PBL modules that calculate or output the effects of condensation heating from shallow cumulus, either in terms of heat/energy or convective velocity (w*)?
Failing that, does anyone have any pointers as to how to calculate that from the output variables available?
 
The following two variables may be helpful for diagnosing the heating:

RTHSHTEN : THETA TENDENCY DUE TO SHALLOW CUMULUS SCHEME" "K s-1"
RQVSHTEN : "Q_V TENDENCY DUE TO SHALLOW CUMULUS SCHEME" "kg kg-1 s-1"
 
Thanks for that, can you elaborate a little more? I don't understand the units associated with these parameters, is this a rate of change?
 
Yes they are the change rates of potential temperature (delta theta/delt) and water vapor mixing ratio (delta qv/delt) caused by shallow convective process.
 
Top