ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-7-409-2007 Evaluation of a new convective cloud field model: precipitation over the maritime continent Graf H.-F. 1 Yang J. 1 University of Cambridge, Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Cambridge, UK 23 01 2007 7 2 409 421 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/409/2007/acp-7-409-2007.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/409/2007/acp-7-409-2007.pdf

A convective cloud field model (CCFM) is substituted for a standard mass flux parameterisation of convective clouds in a limited area atmospheric model (REMO) and is tested for a whole annual cycle (July 1997 to June 1998) over the West Pacific Maritime Continent. REMO with CCFM is run in 0.5-degree resolution and the model at the lateral boundaries is forced 6-hourly by ECMWF reanalysis data. Simulated precipitation from runs with the standard convection parameterisation and with CCFM is compared against two sets of observations. The use of CCFM clearly improves the simulated precipitation patterns and total rainfall over the whole model domain. The distribution between large-scale and convective precipitation becomes more realistic. CCFM shows to be a useful concept to describe convective cloud spectra in atmospheric models, although there are still similar problems with occasionally extreme precipitation as in the original set-up of REMO.

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