Precipitation efficiency (PE) is a useful concept for estimating precipitation under a given environmental condition. PE is used in various situations in meteorology such as to evaluate severe precipitation associated with a single storm event, as a parameter of cumulus convective parameterization, and to separate clouds and precipitation in climate projection studies. PE has been defined in several ways. In this review, we first introduce definitions of PE from microscopic and macroscopic perspectives, and provide estimates of PE based on observational and modeling approaches. Then, we review PE in shallow and organized deep convective systems that provide either a conceptual framework or physical constraints on representations of convection in models. Specifically, we focus on the roles of PE in cloud-radiative feedbacks to climate variability. Finally, we argue the usefulness of PE for investigating cloud and precipitation changes in climate projection studies.

    The East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) and the Australian winter monsoon (AWM) are two important components of the Asian–Australian monsoon system during boreal summer. The simultaneous variations of these two monsoons would have remarkable impacts on climate in the Asian–Australian region. Using the reanalysis datasets, we investigated the mechanisms of variation and impacts of East Asian–Australian monsoons (EAAMs). The singular value decomposition (SVD) is performed of the June–July–August (JJA) mean anomalous zonal wind for AWM as the left field and JJA mean anomalous meridional wind for EASM as the right field after both El Niño–Southern Oscillation and India Ocean Dipole signals are filtered out. Our results demonstrate that AWM and EASM are closely related to each other as revealed by the first leading SVD mode. The anomalously strong (weak) EAAMs correspond to anomalously strong (weak) AWM and EASM to the south of 30°N. When EAAMs are anomalously strong, cold sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) appears in regions near northern and northeastern coasts of Australia, whereas the warmer SSTA appears in the northwestern tropical Pacific and South China Sea. The colder SSTA is associated with the upwelling of cold water from below, induced by equatorial easterly anomalies, reinforcing the anticyclonic circulation over Australia through the Matsuno/Gill-type response, whereas warm SSTA appears in the northwestern tropical Pacific and South China Sea as a result of oceanic response to the intensified northwest Pacific subtropical anticyclonic circulation. The EASM couples with AWM via the anomalous easterlies near the equator in the Maritime Continent (MC) region and the slanted vertical anomalous circulations. In the years with strong EAAMs, precipitation decreases in northern Australia and over areas from the western Pacific to Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea of China. Meanwhile, the western MC and the southeastern China experience more-than-normal precipitation.

    We made an effort to inspect the raindrop size distribution (RSD) characteristics of Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean tropical cyclones (TCs) using ground-based disdrometer measurements from observational sites in India and Taiwan. Five TCs (2010–2013) from the Indian Ocean and six TCs (2014–2016) from the Pacific Ocean were measured using particle size and velocity disdrometers installed in south India and south Taiwan, respectively. Significant differences between the RSDs of Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean TCs are noticed. For example, a higher number of small drops is observed in Indian Ocean TCs, whereas Pacific Ocean TCs have more mid-size and large drops. RSDs of Pacific Ocean TCs have higher mass-weighted mean diameter and lower normalized intercept parameter than Indian Ocean TCs. RSD values quantified based on rainfall rate and precipitation types also showed similar characteristics between Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean TCs. The radar reflectivity and rainfall rate (Z-R) relations and shape and slope (μ-Λ) relations of both oceanic (Indian and Pacific) TCs are found to be distinctly different. Possible causes for the dissimilarities in RSD features between Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean TCs are due to relative differences in water vapor availability and convective activity between TCs in these two oceanic basins.

    This study examined the roles of wind-evaporation feedback in the tropical cyclone (TC) intensification, with special attention devoted to the feedback in weak wind areas (domains where the 10-m wind speed is smaller than 5, 10, and 15 m s⁻¹). This was done by setting lower limits of the 10-m wind speed in the calculation from the underlying ocean in a nonhydrostatic cloud-resolving model. As a result, the surface evaporation is enhanced in outer regions of a TC where the actual wind speed is smaller than the prescribed lower limit(s). Results show that increasing the lower limit reduces the radial water vapor contrast in the lower troposphere (below 100 m) and suppresses the TC size and intensity at the mature stage by 30–33 % and 5–14 %, respectively, compared to the control run with all standard model settings. The increased evaporation enhances the outer convective activity and reduces the radial pressure gradient in the lower troposphere. As a result, the inflow and the inward advection of angular momentum are reduced and the enhanced convection in the outer region suppresses eyewall updraft and thus reduces the secondary circulation and finally the TC intensity. Moreover, the outer region convection suppresses the rainband activity, within a radius of 300 km from the TC center. The contribution of the wind-evaporation feedback to the enhancement of the radial contrast of water vapor in the lower troposphere is a fundamentally important element for TC intensification, suggesting that the understanding of TC development process can be improved by elucidating the role of the weak wind area.

    The Baiu front (BF) is generally formed in May in the western North Pacific. Using objective analysis data from 1979 to 2014 (36 years), this study investigated the interannual variability of Baiu frontal activity (BFA) in May (BFA-M). In May, seasonal enhancement of warm and moist southerlies from the tropics climatologically establishes the BF as a large-scale quasi-stationary front. The strength of the southerlies from the tropics also controls the interannual variability of BFA-M. The anomalous large-scale circulation centered around Taiwan, which can be interpreted as a moist Rossby wave from the equatorial Kelvin-Rossby wave packet in the western tropical Pacific, modifies the strength of the southerlies. The equatorial Kelvin-Rossby wave packet, which is identified as the equatorial intraseasonal oscillation (ISO), propagates eastward from the Indian Ocean to the western Pacific.

The interannual variability of BFA-M has a biennial tendency, which stands in contrast with the three-year or four-year variation period of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The biennial tendency is characterized by a zonal tripole distribution of sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical Pacific, with corresponding anomalous Walker circulations. The induced anomaly fields are suitable for confining the disintegration of the equatorial Kelvin–Rossby wave packet in the western tropical Pacific and guiding the following northwestward propagation of the moist Rossby wave. With the phase reversal of ISO, the biennial tendency remains in the western part of the BF from May to mid-June, although the ENSO controls the BFA in the central part of the BF in June. This study proposes that the equatorial ISO in the Indian Ocean in April can be an indicator of BFA-M strength in the western North Pacific.

    This study constructs a merged total column ozone (TCO) dataset using 20 available satellite Level 2 TCO (L2SAT) datasets over 40 years from 1978 to 2017. The individual 20 datasets and the merged TCO dataset are corrected against ground-based Dobson and Brewer spectrophotometer TCO (GD) measurements. Two bias correction methods are used: simple linear regression (SLR) as a function of time and multiple linear regression (MLR) as a function of time, solar zenith angle, and effective ozone temperature. All of the satellite datasets are consistent with GD within ±2–3 %, except for some degraded data from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer/Earth Probe during a period of degraded calibration and from the Ozone Mapping and Profiling Suite (OMPS) provided from NOAA at an early stage of measurements. OMPS data provided from NASA show fairly stable L2SAT–GD differences. The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment/MetOp-A and -B datasets show abrupt changes of approximately 8 DU coincident with the change of retrieval algorithm. For the TCO merged datasets created by averaging all coincident data located within a grid cell from the 20 satellite-borne TCO datasets, the differences between corrected and uncorrected TCOs by MLR are generally positive at lower latitudes where the bias correction increases TCO because of low effective ozone temperature. In the trend analysis, the difference between corrected and uncorrected TCO trends by MLR shows clear seasonal and latitudinal dependency, whereas such seasonal and latitudinal dependency is lost by SLR. The root mean square difference of L2SAT–GD for the uncorrected merged datasets, 8.6 DU, is reduced to 8.4 DU after correction using SLR and MLR. Therefore, the empirically corrected merged TCO datasets that are converted into time-series homogenization with high temporal-resolution are suitable as a data source for trend analyses as well as assimilation for long-term reanalysis.

    The tropical cyclone (TC) center position is often needed in the study of inner-core processes although there is currently no consensus on the definition of the TC center. While previous studies evaluated center-detecting methods in terms of the center position, vertical tilt and decomposed symmetric, and asymmetric circulations, this study used the 1-km resolution output of the predicted Hurricane Wilma (2005) at 5-minute intervals to evaluate the four TC centers that are frequently used in the diagnostic analysis of the inner-core dynamics processes: the pressure centroid center (PCC), the potential vorticity (PV) centroid center (PVC), the maximum tangential wind center (MTC), and the minimum pressure variance center (MVC) by focusing on the evolution of the small-scale track oscillation and vortex tilt.

The differences in the detected center position and vertical tilt are generally small during the course of rapid intensification and eyewall replacement. All four methods lead to similar small-scale track oscillations that rotate cyclonically around the mean track. While the MVC and PVC lead to a relatively smooth rotation, abrupt changes exist in the track oscillation of the MTC; the track oscillation of the PCC contains amplified embedded rotations that are associated with the PV mixing in the eye region. The tracks of the MVC and PVC relative to the lower-level center (vertical tilt) are generally smooth, while the relative tracks of the MTC and PCC contain abrupt changes. The MVC also leads to the strongest symmetric structure in the tangential wind, PV, and radial PV gradient in the eyewall region. This study suggests that the MVC should be selected in the study of inner-core processes.

More than one hundred days were simulated over very large domains with fine (0.156 km to 2.5 km) grid spacing for realistic conditions to test the hypothesis that storm (kilometer) and large-eddy (hectometer) resolving simulations would provide an improved representation of clouds and precipitation in atmospheric simulations. At scales that resolve convective storms (storm-resolving for short), the vertical velocity variance becomes resolved and a better physical basis is achieved for representing clouds and precipitation. Similarly to past studies we found an improved representation of precipitation at kilometer scales, as compared to models with parameterized convection. The main precipitation features (location, diurnal cycle and spatial propagation) are well captured already at kilometer scales, and refining resolution to hectometer scales does not substantially change the simulations in these respects. It does, however, lead to a reduction in the precipitation on the time-scales considered – most notably over the ocean in the tropics. Changes in the distribution of precipitation, with less frequent extremes are also found in simulations incorporating hectometer scales. Hectometer scales appear to be more important for the representation of clouds, and make it possible to capture many important aspects of the cloud field, from the vertical distribution of cloud cover, to the distribution of cloud sizes, and to the diel (daily) cycle. Qualitative improvements, particularly in the ability to differentiate cumulus from stratiform clouds, are seen when one reduces the grid spacing from kilometer to hectometer scales. At the hectometer scale new challenges arise, but the similarity of observed and simulated scales, and the more direct connection between the circulation and the unconstrained degrees of freedom make these challenges less daunting. This quality, combined with already improved simulation as compared to more parameterized models, underpins our conviction that the use and further development of storm-resolving models offers exciting opportunities for advancing understanding of climate and climate change.

    The impacts of the number density of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and other thermodynamic quantities on moist Rayleigh convection were examined. A numerical model, consisting of a simple two–dimensional equation for Boussinesq air and a sophisticated double moment microphysics scheme, was developed. The impact of the number of CCN is most prominent in the initially formed convection, whereas the convection in the quasi–steady state does not significantly depend on the number of CCN. It is suggested that the former convection is driven by a mechanism without a background circulation, such as parcel theory. In contrast, the latter convection appears to be driven by the statically unstable background layer.

Incorporating the cloud microphysics reduces the integrated kinetic energy and number of convective cells (increases the distance between the cells), with some exceptions, which are consistent with previous studies. These features are not largely sensitive to the number of CCN. It is shown in this study that the reduction in kinetic energy is mainly due to condensation (evaporation) in the upper (lower) layer, which tends to stabilize the fluid.

The ensemble simulation shows that the sensitivity of the moist processes to changes in the temperature at the bottom boundary, temperature lapse rate, water vapor mixing ratio, and CCN is qualitatively similar to that in the control simulation. The impact becomes strong with increasing temperature lapse rate. The number of convective cells in a domain decreases with the degree of supersaturation or an increase in the domain-integrated condensate.

    In the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF), an ensemble transform matrix (ETM) is a matrix that maps background perturbations to analysis perturbations. All valid ETMs are shown to be the square roots of the analysis error covariance in ensemble space that preserve the analysis ensemble mean. ETKF chooses the positive symmetric square root T^s as its ETM, which is justified by the fact that T^s is the closest matrix to the identity I in the sense of the Frobenius norm. Besides this minimum norm property, T^s is observed to have the diagonally predominant property (DPP), i.e., the diagonal terms are at least an order of magnitude larger than the off-diagonal terms.

To explain the DPP, first, the minimum norm property has been proved. Although ETKF relies on this property to choose its ETM, this property has never been proved in the data assimilation literature. The extension of this proof to the scalar multiple of I reveals that T^s is a sum of a diagonal matrix D and a full matrix P whose Frobenius norms are proportional, respectively, to the mean and the standard deviation of the spectrum of T^s. In general cases, these norms are not much different but the fact that the number of non-zero elements of P is the square of the ensemble size whereas that of D is the ensemble size causes the large difference in the orders of elements of P and D. However, the DPP is only an empirical fact and not an inherently mathematical property of T^s. There exist certain spectra of T^s that break the DPP but such spectra are rarely observed in practice since their occurrences require an unrealistic situation where background errors are larger than observation errors by at least two orders of magnitude in all modes in observation space.

    In this study, we investigated the impact of mixed Rossby-gravity waves (MRGWs) on the diurnal cycle of precipitation over the southwestern coastal area of Sumatra using data captured during a pilot field campaign of the Years of the Maritime Continent (YMC) project. The study focused on a 19-day period from 24 November to 12 December 2015, using data from intensive surface observations, radiosondes, and a C-band polarimetric radar (collected aboard the research vessel Mirai at 4°4′S, 101°54′E), as well as data from a global objective analysis. The results indicated a relationship between oscillations with periods of several days in the intensity of diurnal precipitation and the wind field. Wind oscillations were attributed to several westward-propagating MRGWs traversing the study site. Diurnal convection and precipitation over the land and ocean were enhanced (suppressed) when MRGW-induced offshore (onshore) wind perturbations dominated. Large-scale low-level convergence and upper-level divergence, stronger sea-breeze flow, and colder land-breeze flow were also observed with the intensification of MRGW-induced offshore wind perturbations. However, diurnal precipitation displayed a similar well-defined phase and propagation pattern over the land and ocean, coherent with the regular evolution of sea- and land-breeze circulations, regardless of wind perturbations induced by MRGWs. The results suggest that local convergence induced by the land–sea contrast is mainly responsible for driving the diurnal cycle. Notwithstanding, MRGWs exert a significant impact on the amplitude of diurnal convection and precipitation by modulating the large-scale dynamic structure of the atmosphere and the intensity of local sea- and land-breeze circulations.