Analysis of satellite-observed tropical cloud clusters II. Thermal, moisture and precipitation

Abstract

This paper discusses the temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall characteristics of the summertime satellite-observed tropical weather systems in the Western Pacific and the West Indies. Comparisons are made with the Jordan (1958) mean West Indies sounding. Practically no temperature differences are found between the cloud cluster, the cloud cluster environment, and the clear regions. The primary differences between these weather systems is in the middle level moisture contents. It is shown that the typical variability of individual soundings parameters within each weather system type is larger than the mean parameter difference between systems. The rainfall within the tropical cloud cluster is shown to be highly concentrated. A large diurnal variation of cloud cluster rainfall and convergence is shown and discussed. DOI: 10.1111/j.2153-3490.1976.tb00690.x