Convective clustering, the spatial organization of tropical deep convection, can manifest itself in two ways: through a decrease in the total area covered by convection and/or through a decrease in the number of convective areas. Much of our current understanding of convective clustering comes from simulations in idealized radiative convective equilibrium (RCE) configurations. In these simulations the two forms of convective clustering tend to covary, and their individual effects on the climate are thus hard to disentangle. This study shows that in aquaplanet simulations with more realistic boundary conditions, such as meridional gradients of surface temperature and rotational forces, the two aspects of convective clustering are not equivalent and are associated with different impacts on the large-scale climate. For instance, reducing the convective area in the equatorial region in the aquaplanet simulations results in broader meridional humidity and rain distributions and in lower tropospheric temperatures throughout the tropics. By contrast, the number of convective regions primarily impacts the zonal variance of humidity-related quantities in the aquaplanet simulations, as the distribution of convective regions affects the size of the subsidence regions and thereby the moistening influence of convective regions. The aquaplanet simulations confirm many other qualitative results from RCE simulations, such as a reduction of equatorial tropospheric humidity when the area covered by convection diminishes.
©2020. The Authors.