Figure 3.

Illustration of the influence of shallow convection lateral entrainment and detrainment on the vertical distribution of clouds. With weak lateral mixing (entrainment, left) as in ECHAM6.2 shallow convective updrafts are less diluted with environmental air and therefore reach higher before losing buoyancy. As a consequence they precipitate more efficiently and act to dry the cloud layer. With stronger lateral mixing as in ECHAM6.3 more humidity is detrained into the cloud layer where as a consequence cloud layers can form. Also, the stronger mixing means the convective updraft loses buoyancy faster and therefore precipitates less efficiently.