Trade Wind Boundary Layer Turbulence and Shallow Convection: New
Insights Combining SAR Images, Satellite Brightness Temperature and
Airborne In Situ Measurements
Abstract
The imprint of marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) dynamical
structures on sea surface roughness, as seen from Sentinel-1 Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SAR) acquisitions, is investigated. We focus on February
13th, 2020, a case study of the EUREC4A (Elucidating the role of
clouds-circulation coupling in climate) field campaign. For suppressed
conditions, convective rolls imprint on sea surface roughness is
confirmed through the intercomparison with MABL turbulent organization
deduced from airborne measurements. A discretization of the SAR wide
swath into 25 x 25 km$^2$ tiles then allows us to capture the
spatial variability of the turbulence organization varying from rolls to
cells. Secondly, we objectively detect cold pools within the SAR image
and combine them with geostationary brightness temperature. The
geometrical or physically-based metrics of cold pools are correlated to
cloud properties. This provides a promising methodology to analyze the
dynamics of convective systems as seen from below and above.