Shallow cumulus clouds interact with their environment and redistribute heat, moisture, and momentum (wind speed and direction) in the atmosphere. The same convective plume that forms the cloud is for a large extent responsible for this transport. Modeling the effect of shallow cumulus clouds is challenging because these clouds are smaller than can be directly simulated by models. Weather and climate models therefore rely on empirical functions to represent the effect of sub-grid processes such as the turbulent and convective transport. The transport of moisture and heat through cumulus convection has received a lot of attention from the atmospheric science community. Momentum transport has been studied far less, even though a few studies indicate that momentum transport may have a large influence on local weather as well as the large-scale circulation.

Measurements of wind and momentum fluxes are not typically at the centre of field studies on (shallow) cumulus convection, but the mesoscale organization of convection is likely closely tied to patterns in wind. This study combines in situ high-frequency turbulence measurements from a gust probe onboard a Cessna aircraft with downward profiling Doppler wind lidar (DWL) measurements onboard a Falcon aircraft to study variability in the wind profile and momentum fluxes in regions of convection. The dual-aircraft measurements were made during three prototype flights in shallow convective regimes over German agricultural areas (two of which had hilly topography, one flat) in late spring 2019, including forced cumulus humilis under weak winds and “popcorn” cumuli during stronger wind and wind shear after front passages.

All flights show pronounced meso-gamma (2–20 km) scale variability in the wind, with the largest wind variance (on the order of 2–4 m2 s−2) towards cloud base and in the cloud layer on flights with large vertical wind shear. The wind and wind variance profiles measured in situ and by lidar compare very well, despite the DWL's coarse (∼ 8 km) horizontal footprint. This highlights the presence of wind fluctuations on scales larger than a few kilometres and that wind lidars can be used more deliberately in field studies to map (mesoscale) flows.

Cloudy transects are associated with more than twice the momentum flux compared with cloud-free transects. The contribution of the updraft to the total momentum flux, typically one-third to two-thirds, is far less than the typical contribution of the updraft to buoyancy flux. Even on the same flight day, momentum flux profiles can differ per track, with one case of counter-gradient momentum transport when the updraft does carry substantial momentum flux. Scales beyond 1 km contribute significantly to the momentum flux and there is clear evidence for compensating flux contributions across scales. The results demonstrate that momentum flux profiles and their variability require understanding of motions across a range of scales, with non-negligible contributions of the clear-sky fluxes and of mesoscales that are likely coupled to the convection.

This study investigates how wind shear and momentum fluxes in the surface- and boundary layer vary across wind and cloud regimes. We use a 9-year-long data set from the Cabauw observatory complemented by (8.2 × 8.2 (Formula presented.)) daily Large Eddy Simulation (LES) hindcasts. An automated algorithm classifies observed and simulated days into different cloud regimes: (a) clear-sky days, (b) days with shallow convective clouds rooted in the surface layer, with two ranges of cloud cover, and (c) non-convective cloud days. Categorized days in observations and LES do not always match, particularly the number of non-convective cloud days are underestimated in the LES, which likes to develop convection. However, the climatology and diurnal cycle of winds for each regime are very similar in LES and observations, strengthening our confidence in LES’ skill to reproduce certain clouds for certain atmospheric states. Along-wind momentum flux profiles are similar across all regimes, but large cloud cover (convective and non-convective) days have larger total momentum flux distributed over a deeper layer, with up to 30% of the surface flux still present near cloud base. The clear-sky and especially shallow cumulus regime with low cloud cover have notably larger crosswind momentum fluxes in the boundary layer. Surface-layer wind shear at daytime is smallest in the shallow cumulus regimes, having deeper boundary layers and a steady increase in surface layer wind speed during daytime. Compared to clear-sky days at a similar stability, convective cloud regimes have smaller surface-layer wind shear and larger surface friction than estimated by Monin-Obukhov Similarity Theory.