loading page

Learning by doing: seasonal and diurnal features of tropical precipitation in a global-coupled storm-resolving model
  • +1
  • Hans Segura,
  • Cathy Hohenegger,
  • Christian Wengel,
  • Bjorn Stevens
Hans Segura
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

Author Profile
Cathy Hohenegger
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Author Profile
Christian Wengel
Unknown
Author Profile
Bjorn Stevens
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
Author Profile

Abstract

Using the global and coupled ICON-Sapphire model with a grid spacing of \SI{5}{\kilo\meter}, we describe seasonal and diurnal features of the tropical rainbelt and assess the limits of ICON-Sapphire in representing tropical precipitation. Aside from the meridional migration, the tropical rainbelt exhibits a seasonal enlargement and a zonal migration. Surprisingly, ICON-Sapphire reproduces these characteristics with better performance over land than over ocean and with a very high degree of agreement to observations. ICON-Sapphire especially struggles in capturing the seasonal features of the tropical rainbelt over the oceans of the Eastern Hemisphere, an issue associated with a cold SST bias at the equator. ICON-Sapphire also shows that a perfect representation of the diurnal cycle of precipitation over land is not a requirement to capture the seasonal features of the rainbelt over land, while over the ocean, 5km is sufficient to adequately represent the diurnal cycle of precipitation.