Deep convection and upper-tropospheric humidity: A look from the A-Train

This work investigates the links between deep convective clouds and upper-tropospheric humidity. We collocate data from AIRS, CloudSat, and the GDAS model output, and globally average and grid our results to seasonal scales for one year, 2007. The CloudSat cloud scenario retrieval is used as a reliable identifier of deep convective events, during which we extract the nearest 300-mb humidity from AIRS and GDAS data. The zonal averages of thus screened data clearly show significant increase in the humidity, and suppression of the all-sky outgoing long-wave radiation.