Abstract
This manuscript presents a study of oceanic diurnal warm layers in
kilometer-scale global coupled simulations and their impact on
atmospheric convection in the tropics. With the implementation of thin
vertical levels in the ocean, diurnal warm layers are directly resolved,
and sea surface temperature (SST) fluctuations of up to several Kelvin
appear in regions with low wind and high solar radiation. The increase
of SST during the day causes an abrupt afternoon increase of atmospheric
moisture due to enhanced latent heat flux, followed by an increase in
cloud cover and cloud liquid water. However, although the daily SST
amplitude is exaggerated in comparison to reanalysis, this effect only
lasts for 5-6 hours and leads to an absolute difference of 1% for cloud
cover and 0.01 kg m-2 for cloud liquid water. All in all, the impact of
diurnal warm layers on convective cloud cover is found to be negligible
in the tropical mean.