Relationships between thermodynamics and vertical motion profile shape during OTREC

We analyze observations from the Organization of Tropical East Pacific Convection (OTREC) field campaign to understand the thermodynamic controls of the shape of the vertical motion profile. We use a measure of vertical motion called the top-heaviness angle to show that OTREC sampled a wide range of profile shapes. We compare the thermodynamic environment for top and bottom-heavy profiles and find top-heavy vertical motion is differentiated from bottom-heavy by a warmer and drier lower troposphere and a moister upper troposphere. We show that we can characterize moisture profile variability, and consequently vertical motion profile variability, using the saturation fraction (SF), which measures column moisture, and a new metric called the moisture dipole coefficient (MDC), which tracks the vertical location of the anomaly. We demonstrate that a simple entraining plume model captures the vertical motion variability, providing a plausible mechanism for how the thermodynamic environment controls the vertical motion profile shape.