Precipitating convective systems produce gusts from downdrafts as they reach the surface. Those gusts are able to intensify the surface fluxes of sensible and latent heat, with possible consequences to the further evolution of deep convection itself. Despite advances in resolution and in the representation of physical processes, General Circulation Models and even regional models are still very far from representing clouds adequately (i.e., explicitly) and therefore surface flux enhancement by gusts is not simulated by them. In fact, such effect is not usually even parameterized. In this work, a CEM (Cloud Ensemble Model), driven by a prescribed large-scale forcing corresponding to tropical convective conditions, was used to find a parameterization that evaluates surface heat flux enhancement, as a function of precipitation rate, resolved wind and of the resolution of the larger-scale model. The enhancement factor is well correlated with both the resolved wind (-0.67 < ρ < -0.46) and the precipitation rate (0.65 > ρ > 0.4), which were used as input variables for calculating it. The parameterization equation was obtained by fitting the data from the CEM simulations.
Cloud Ensemble Model; Flux Enhancement Parameterization; TOGA-COARE
