Observations of shallow convective clouds generated by solar heating of dark smoke plumes

[摘要] The SEVIRI instrument on the Meteosat Second Generation satellite with both finespatial and temporal resolution allows to detect and follow the dynamics of fastdeveloping meteorological events like spreading smoke plumes and the lifecycles ofconvective clouds. Smoke plumes have the ability to change the atmospheric heatcontent due to absorption and reduced reflection of solar radiation. By these meansthey can trigger formation of shallow convective clouds at theiredge. A heavy smoke plume emerging from burning Lebanese oil tanks andspreading over adjacent deserts on 17 July 2006 has been observed as an exampleof such an effect. This study suggests a physical explanation of the observedconvection along the edge of the smoke plume, namely the strong thermal contrastresulting from solar heating of the smoke layer.

[学科分类] 大气科学