Title: Self-organisation of moist convection as a phase transition

Abstract: To understand the dynamics of the tropical atmosphere, it is important to indentify the intrinsic behavior of cumulus convection independent of variability in surface conditions and interactions with the extra-tropical atmosphere. A useful tool in this is simulations of radiative-convective equilibrium over a uniform sea surface. When such simulations are run on a large enough domain for several weeks of simulation time, it is often observed that the convection spontaneously clusters# into a small part of the domein, while the remaining area becomes increasingly dry.
In this talk it will be shown that this process can be described as an abrupt (first-order) phase transition. A simple theoretical model based on the tropical moisture budget will be introduced, and the results compared to numerical simulations.

Speaker's website: http://www.pa.op.dlr.de/~/GeorgeCraig/