Earthdata Forum

Globally, it is about the project AirHES (Cloud Power & Water, http://airhes.com) -- the second (after Sun) source of renewable power (~800TW) and the first source of fresh water (~11 times more than all rivers).

Which is very surprising:
1) The data that I laid in the previous model calculations of the AirHES seem to be believable, but still sometimes unusual. For example, the average water content inside the clouds, which I laid ~ 350 mg/m3 (here avg LWC in Cloud) approximately corresponds. And the average cloud cover 0.67 (here Part of Cloud Days) of the same order, but the cloudiness in each layer is more than an order of magnitude lower, and therefore the concentration of water and energy drops sharply, leading to an increase the payback by several times.
2) If you follow the maximum water content (here Global Max), then integral water content increases by several times, and, surprisingly, it turns out to be almost the same for Dubai and Singapore, where precipitation is different an order of magnitude!
3) an attempt to check the satellite according to precipitation data leads to a dead end - if you calculate the amount of integral water on all heights and estimate in the average period of moisture in the atmosphere (7-10 days), the value of the precipitation of about a few mm is obtained, while this is really the order meters. Those somewhere lost moisture for 3 orders! I can’t understand this so far, although it is clear that it is the reason for the deterioration of the characteristics of the AirHES.
Question: how to correctly calculate precipitation on the integrated LWC data?

The only conceivable explanation that comes to my mind is that the process is not quasi-static, but dynamic, i.e. the rain itself from the cloud causes at this moment a massive condensation of moisture in the layer of moist air under the cloud, as a result of which the precipitation is many times greater than the initial amount of droplet moisture in this cloud. But it turns the whole physics of the atmosphere upside down!

I thought that if the process is dynamic, i.e. rain is the final stage of accumulation of water content in clouds, then to calculate precipitation it is necessary to use not the average LWC and not even the average in the cloud, but the maximum one, which should be close to the one at which the cloud loses stability and pours out rain. I recalculated the precipitation according to the maximum water content. For Dubai it turned out even higher than the actual precipitation. For Singapore, it is still an order of magnitude lower. It is obvious that we need to collect additional statistics. Perhaps this is the way to resolve this paradox.

Another thing is that then we manage to reach the precipitation level, as it were, only under the cloud itself, but the cloud statistically occupies only a small part of the surface, and the precipitation level is calculated for the entire surface ... i.e. dead end again!

Thank you for your question.

A Subject Matter Expert has been notified and will answer your question shortly.

Thank you,

David W.
NASA Langley ASDC DAAC Lifecycle

Dear David,
unfortunately, till now your Subject Matter Expert could not find time to answer, although I suppose it is a very important contradiction for understanding the Cloud physics.

Also I have described a similar problem with analyze one German work, see here --
https://bari-x-andrew.livejournal.com/60704.html

I hope your expert will be so kind that still give me some ideas for elimination this principal problem.

Hi Airhes,

Sorry for the slow response back. The two SME's I contacted weren't sure how to respond to your post. I see you have tried other sources (the German work you mentioned) to help find a solution to your problem. Perhaps other members of the Forum will make suggestions to help you out.

Thank you,

David W.
NASA Langley ASDC DAAC Lifecycle