Formation and modulation of ice clouds by gravity waves

Observational and modeling studies suggest that gravity waves (GW) canhave a substantial impact on the microphysical properties of iceclouds and their life cycle. However, the effects of GW on ice cloudsare only crudely parameterized in current climate models, if atall. One major obstacle here is that large portion of the GW spectrumhas to be parameterized itself in those models. Recently, an asymptotic framework was introduced allowing forself-consistent description of the interactions between GW and iceclouds and analytical solutions were derived for the nucleated numberof ice crystals in a parcel model (Dolaptchiev et al., 2023).  Here,we evaluate the results from the asymptotic analysis in 3D idealizedexperiments with fully resolved GW, where the GW dynamics is forcingdouble-moment ice microphysics scheme. In addition, correspondingexperiments with parameterized GW dynamics are performed. In thosesimulations a next generation ray-tracing-based GW parameterization isused, which allows for an improved representation of the temporal andspatial GW variability. Within the present framework we develop andtest coupled GW-cirrus parameterizations for climate model. References: S. Dolaptchiev, P. Spichtinger, M. Baumgartner and U. Achatz, 2023,"Interactions between Gravity Waves and Cirrus Clouds: AsymptoticModeling of Wave-Induced Ice Nucleation", Journal of the AtmosphericSciences, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-22-0234.