Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-2026

Department

Department of Physics; Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences

Abstract

Recent aircraft observations of marine stratocumulus clouds consistently showed that cloud microphysical relationships vary with altitude, indicating inhomogeneous mixing characteristics near cloud top and homogeneous mixing characteristics in mid-levels of clouds. Here, we conduct model intercomparison of an idealized, non-precipitating stratocumulus cloud to evaluate model consistency and examine whether simulations can reproduce the observed mixing characteristics. The results show that eleven large-eddy simulations with various dynamics and microphysics schemes show good agreement on the thermodynamical, microphysical, and dynamical properties of the stratocumulus-topped boundary layer in a steady state. The inter-model spread in steady-state liquid water path is significantly reduced compared to previous model intercomparison studies. This improvement might be due to better models and more consistent initial conditions than those used decades ago. In addition, most simulations, including a low-dimensional simulation, capture inhomogeneous mixing characteristics near the cloud top and homogeneous mixing characteristics inside the cloud. Moreover, simulations using Lagrangian microphysics schemes agree better with the observed mixing characteristics compared with those using the bin microphysics schemes. Since most simulations do not fully resolve the entrainment process, the apparent mixing characteristics arise from the variations in the resolved cloud properties. Our results support the vertical circulation mixing hypothesis, which suggests that homogeneous mixing characteristics in mid-levels of clouds are due to the vertical circulation of entrainment-affected and diluted parcels from the cloud top moved to lower levels.

Publisher's Statement

© 2026 The Author(s). Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.1029/2025MS005620

Publication Title

Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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