An Approach for Convective Parameterization with Memory: Separating Microphysics and Transport in Grid-Scale Equations

Abstract An approach for convective parameterization is presented here, in which grid-scale budget equations of parameterization use separate microphysics and transport terms. This separation is used both as a way to introduce into the parameterization a more explicit causal link between all involved processes and as a vehicle for an easier representation of the memory of convective cells. The equations of parameterization become closer to those of convection-resolving models cloud-system-resolving models (CSRMs) and large-eddy simulations (LESs), facilitating parameterization development and validation processes versus a detailed budget of these high-resolution models. The new Microphysics and Transport Convective Scheme (MTCS) equations are presented and discussed. A first version of a convective scheme based on these equations is tested within a single-column framework. The results obtained with the new scheme are close to those of traditional ones in very moist convective cases like the Global Atmospheric Research Programme (GARP) Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE) Phase III, 1974. The simulation of more difficult drier situations European Cloud Systems Study/Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Cloud System Studies (EUROCS/GCSS) is improved through more memory due to higher sensitivity of simulated convection to dry midtropospheric layers; a prognostic relation between cloudy entrainment and precipitation evaporation dramatically improves the prediction of the phase lag of the convective diurnal cycle over land with respect to surface heat forcing. The present proposal contains both a relatively general equation set, which can deal continuously with dry, moist, and deep precipitating convection, and separate—and still crude—explicit moist microphysics. In the future, when increasing the complexity of microphysical computations, such an approach may help to unify dry, moist, and deep precipitating convection inside a single parameterization, as well as facilitate global climate model (GCM) and limited-area model (LAM) parameterizations in sharing the same formulation of explicit microphysics with CSRMs.