EarthCARE Observations of Vertical Motion and Cloud Microphysical Structure in Tropical Cyclones
- 1The University of Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan)
Abstract
The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) provides the first spaceborne Doppler radar measurements. We construct a tropical cyclone (TC) dataset by collocating 16 months of EarthCARE observations with the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship, comprising 96 intercepts of 27 TCs. The inner-core region exhibits enhanced reflectivity, stronger and more variable upward air motion, and a broader Doppler velocity distribution. Two independent inner-core intercepts show consistent Doppler and air velocity structures. In the rainband region, the Doppler velocity distribution shifts toward more negative values, accompanied by more negative particle terminal velocities and a bright band near the melting level. Particle classifications show small ice dominates the upper troposphere, whereas snow extends toward more negative Doppler velocities between 5 and 12 km. These results show that radial variations in Doppler velocity reflect differences in both air motion and particle sedimentation. We conduct a preliminary single-case comparison for Hurricane Humberto using the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model with two common microphysical configurations. Both configurations underestimate TC intensity and produce narrower distributions than observed. Compared with the Kodama et al. (2021) configuration, the Takasuka et al. (2024) configuration more closely reproduces upper-level structure, with more gradual reflectivity and Doppler velocity changes and a broader cloud ice distribution. Because the comparison is limited to one case, it demonstrates sensitivity to the microphysical configurations rather than a general evaluation of model performance. Overall, EarthCARE provides complementary constraints on vertical air motion, condensate properties, and particle sedimentation for evaluating TC microphysics.
Versions
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BibTeX
@article{huang2026earthcare,
title = {{EarthCARE Observations of Vertical Motion and Cloud Microphysical Structure in Tropical Cyclones}},
author = {Jin-De Huang and Woosub Roh and Tomoki Miyakawa and Masaki Satoh},
journal = {Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.5194/acp-26-15633-2026},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-26-15633-2026},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - EarthCARE Observations of Vertical Motion and Cloud Microphysical Structure in Tropical Cyclones
AU - Jin-De Huang
AU - Woosub Roh
AU - Tomoki Miyakawa
AU - Masaki Satoh
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/06
JO - Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
DO - 10.5194/acp-26-15633-2026
UR - https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-26-15633-2026
AB - The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) provides the first spaceborne Doppler radar measurements. We construct a tropical cyclone (TC) dataset by collocating 16 months of EarthCARE observations with the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship, comprising 96 intercepts of 27 TCs. The inner-core region exhibits enhanced reflectivity, stronger and more variable upward air motion, and a broader Doppler velocity distribution. Two independent inner-core intercepts show consistent Doppler and air velocity structures. In the rainband region, the Doppler velocity distribution shifts toward more negative values, accompanied by more negative particle terminal velocities and a bright band near the melting level. Particle classifications show small ice dominates the upper troposphere, whereas snow extends toward more negative Doppler velocities between 5 and 12 km. These results show that radial variations in Doppler velocity reflect differences in both air motion and particle sedimentation. We conduct a preliminary single-case comparison for Hurricane Humberto using the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model with two common microphysical configurations. Both configurations underestimate TC intensity and produce narrower distributions than observed. Compared with the Kodama et al. (2021) configuration, the Takasuka et al. (2024) configuration more closely reproduces upper-level structure, with more gradual reflectivity and Doppler velocity changes and a broader cloud ice distribution. Because the comparison is limited to one case, it demonstrates sensitivity to the microphysical configurations rather than a general evaluation of model performance. Overall, EarthCARE provides complementary constraints on vertical air motion, condensate properties, and particle sedimentation for evaluating TC microphysics.
SN - 1680-7324
ER -