Primary Submission Category: Applications in Physical Sciences, Engineering, Environment and Miscellaneous Applications
How Environmental Factors Drive Convective Cloud Detrainment Heights: An Application of LiNGAM
Authors: Dié Wang, Simon Lee, Tao Zhang,
Presenting Author: Dié Wang*
This study investigates how environmental factors influence the level of maximum detrainment (LMD) in deep convective clouds (DCCs). Through an application of the Linear Non-Gaussian Acyclic Model (LiNGAM), we discover causal structures between environmental variables and LMD, observed at six tropical sites operated by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility. LiNGAM effectively identifies causal directions among variables of interest, revealing robust relationships such as those among the lifting condensation level (LCL), level of free convection (LFC), and convective inhibition (CIN), aligning with prior knowledge. Relative humidity is shown to directly influence LMD; however, this relationship exhibits strong nonlinearity and becomes difficult to detect when the contrast between oceanic and continental environments is excluded from the analysis.