A summary of the GCSS BL clouds working group activities discussed at this meeting:

• DYCOMS II drizzling stratocu : Andy Ackerman has had the reviews back on the LES intercomparison paper which he described as minor, although he needed to make somewhat more major changes to the text - many thanks again to Andy for all his hard work on this.
• RICO raining cumulus case : Margreet van Zanten and Pier Siebesma have produced a first draft of a paper on the LES intercomparison for discussion amongst the co-authors. Pier is going to take a more detailed look at the SCM models for both the composite and the full 3 week period. Several groups were interested in running LES/CRMs for the full period too, to look at the variability, but Pier suggested they wait until he's had a chance to check out the forcing. I suggest those interested contact Pier directly.
• Cloud-feedback intercomparison : as part of the GCSS collaboration with CFMIP ( Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project), Minghua Zhang is going to lead a set of idealised case studies to examine cloud feedbacks under changes in forcing. The hope is that the SCM reproduce some aspects of the behaviour seen in their parent GCMs and that the LES show more consistency that the SCM. A few details remain to be sorted out but he hopes to release the cases within a few months. So, more information on this soon.
• Transitional case study : there was a lot of interest in revisiting some form of Lagrangian-type case to examine the transition from stratocumulus to shallow cumulus. This actually represents a challenge for both SCM and LES models and there are also several possible approaches to forming an intercomparison along these lines. So Irina Sandu, working with Bjorn Stevens, has kindly agreed to explore the options over the next 6 to 9 months and get back to us.