Stratocumulus mesoscale cellular convection growth.

• Initially, a stratus/stratocumulus layer is present at the top of a shallow (500 m depth) boundary layer which deepens gradually to around 1500-2000 m as is passes over increasing sea surface temperatures. Initially, there is little cellular structure.

• The domain size is 500x500 km (GOES-10 4km resolution visible channel data) with the central position initially at 32.5 N, 122 W. The central position of the final image is 20.3 N, 139W. The Lagrangian trajectory was obtained using the NOAA Hysplit trajectory model

• Notice how the cells grow in size from smaller than the 4km image resolution to around 40-50 km over the duration of the evolution. The mesoscale circulations are associated with the decoupling of the boundary layer (into a dry well-mixed surface layer and a separate cloud layer). The bright regions are caused by local enhancement of the stratocumulus layer by penetrating cumulus elements rising from the top of the surface layer.

• For the first three days the cloud fraction remains high but on the fourth day the cloud field becomes more broken.

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