Earth's climate sensitivity depends on how shallow clouds in the trades respond to changes in the large-scale tropical circulation with warming. In canonical theory for this cloud-circulation coupling, it is assumed that the clouds are controlled by the field of vertical motion on horizontal scales larger than the convection's depth (~1 km). This assumption has been challenged both by recent in situ observations, and idealized large-eddy simulations (LESs). Here, we therefore bring together the recent observations, new analysis from satellite data, and a 40-day, large-domain (1600 x 900 km2) LES of the North Atlantic from the 2020 EUREC4A field campaign, to study the interaction between shallow convection and vertical motions on scales between 10 and 1,000 km (mesoscales), in settings that are as realistic as possible. Across all data sets, the shallow mesoscale vertical motions are consistently represented, ubiquitous, frequently organized into circulations, and formed without imprinting themselves on the mesoscale buoyancy field. Therefore, we use the weak-temperature gradient approximation to show that between at least 12.5–400 km scales, the vertical motion balances heating fluctuations in groups of precipitating shallow cumuli. That is, across the mesoscales, shallow convection controls the vertical motion in the trades, and does not simply adjust to it. In turn, the mesoscale convective heating patterns appear to consistently grow through moisture-convection feedback. Therefore, to represent and understand the cloud-circulation coupling of trade cumuli, the full range of scales between the synoptics and the hectometer must be included in our conceptual and numerical models.

In polar regions, where the boundary layer is often stably stratified, atmospheric models produce large biases depending on the boundary-layer parametrizations and the parametrization of the exchange of energy at the surface. This model intercomparison focuses on the very stable stratification encountered over the Antarctic Plateau in 2009. Here, we analyze results from 10 large-eddy-simulation (LES) codes for different spatial resolutions over 24 consecutive hours, and compare them with observations acquired at the Concordia Research Station during summer. This is a challenging exercise for such simulations since they need to reproduce both the 300-m-deep convective boundary layer and the very thin stable boundary layer characterized by a strong vertical temperature gradient (10 K difference over the lowest 20 m) when the sun is low over the horizon. A large variability in surface fluxes among the different models is highlighted. The LES models correctly reproduce the convective boundary layer in terms of mean profiles and turbulent characteristics but display more spread during stable conditions, which is largely reduced by increasing the horizontal and vertical resolutions in additional simulations focusing only on the stable period. This highlights the fact that very fine resolution is needed to represent such conditions. Complementary sensitivity studies are conducted regarding the roughness length, the subgrid-scale turbulence closure as well as the resolution and domain size. While we find little dependence on the surface-flux parametrization, the results indicate a pronounced sensitivity to both the roughness length and the turbulence closure.