The talk to be given will consist of two partly interrelated parts. First a new parameterization of convective cloud fields (CCFM) will be introduced that allows to explicitly describing spectra of convective clouds, including cloud heights, coverage, vertical velocities and precipitation intensity. The performance of this new approach will be demonstrated for intense observation periods at ARM sites and also by comparing reanalysis and observed data against a 20 year control run with a GCM including CCFM. In the second part some interesting features shall be brought to discussion. These include a model bias of precipitation in the Bay of Bengal that is connected to a local low pressure system, the effect of model resolution on summer monsoon rainfall at the Tibetan Plateau, and the relevance of PBL clouds on the Tibetan Plateau for the radiative balance, which has obvious effects on East Asian and Indian monsons.
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