Sugar, gravel, fish, and flowers: Dependence of mesoscale patterns of trade-wind clouds on environmental conditions

Trade‐wind clouds exhibit a large diversity of spatial organizations at the mesoscale. Over the tropical western Atlantic, a recent study has visually identified four prominent mesoscale patterns of shallow convection, referred to as flowers, fish, gravel, and sugar. We show that these four patterns can be identified objectively from satellite observations by analyzing the spatial distribution of infrared brightness temperatures. By applying this analysis to 19 years of data, we examine relationships between cloud patterns and large‐scale environmental conditions. This investigation reveals that on daily and interannual timescales, the near‐surface wind speed and the strength of the lower‐tropospheric stability discriminate the occurrence of the different organization patterns. These results, combined with the tight relationship between cloud patterns, low‐level cloud amount, and cloud‐radiative effects, suggest that the mesoscale organization of shallow clouds might change under global warming. The role of shallow convective organization in determining low‐cloud feedback should thus be investigated.
Key Points Prominent mesoscale patterns of shallow convection are identified from satellite observationsMesoscale patterns exhibit strong relationships with surface wind speed and lower‐tropospheric stabilityOwing to their differences in low‐cloud fraction, mesoscale patterns exert different impacts on the top‐of‐atmosphere radiation budget