This dissertation describes various aspects of improvements made in the representation of
clouds in the global forecast model of the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Fore-
casts (ECMWF). Cloud parametrization has long been identified as one of the most crucial
and uncertain aspects in General Circulation Models (GCMs) of the atmosphere, which are
used for both Numerical Weather Prediction and the simulation of climate. It is therefore
important to constantly monitor and improve the performance of cloud parametrizations in
those models.
The first part of the work describes the implementation of an existing cloud parametrization
into ECMWF's forecasting system with special attention to a new treatment of the prognos-
tic cloud variables in data assimilation. This is followed by an analysis of the performance
of the parametrization during a 15-year long data assimilation experiment carried out in the
context of the ECMWF reanalysis project. It is shown that despite an overall good perfor-
mance, several weaknesses in the simulation of clouds exist. Subtropical stratocumulus and
extratropical cloudiness are underestimated, while the cloud fraction in the trade cumulus
areas and in the Intertropical Convergence Zone is overestimated.
In the second part of the study detailed revisions of the parametrization of cloud generation
by convective and non-convective processes are described. A consistent new description of
cloud generation by convection is derived using the mass-
ux approach. Furthermore an
improved description of the generation of clouds by non-convective processes is introduced.
The superiority of the new formulation compared to the existing one is demonstrated and
links to other approaches to cloud parametrization are established.
The third part of the work studies the role of vertically varying cloud fraction for the descrip-
tion of microphysical processes. It is shown that the commonly used approach of representing
precipitation in GCMs by means of grid-averaged quantities leads to serious errors in the
parametrization of various physical processes such as the evaporation of precipitation, with
severe consequences for the model's hydrological cycle. A new parametrization of the eects
of vertically-varying cloud fraction based on a separation of cloudy and clear-sky precipita-
tion
uxes is developed and its performance assessed. It is shown that this parametrization
alleviates most of the identied problems and thereby more realistically describes the pre-
cipitation physics in the presence of cloud fraction variations.
The final part of the dissertation takes a critical look at the way the results of cloud
parametrizations are evaluated today. A number of studies using a variety of data sources
and modelling approaches are described and the need for a coordinated use of the various
existing validation techniques is highlighted. A strategy to achieve such coordination is
proposed.
This work provides contributions to virtually all facets of the development of cloud parame-
trizations. It combines theoretical aspects with the use of a variety of modelling approaches
and data sources for the assessment of the performance of the parametrization. All model
improvements described here are now part of the operational version of the ECMWF forecast
model.