This study investigates the direct radiative-convective processes that drive and maintain aggregation within convection permitting elongated channel (and smaller square) simulations of the UK Met Office Unified Model (UM). Our simulations are configured using three fixed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) following the radiative-convective equilibrium model intercomparison project (RCEMIP) protocol. By defining cloud types based on the vertical distribution of condensed water, we study the importance of radiative interactions with each cloud type to aggregation. We eliminate the dependence of the vertically-integrated frozen moist static energy (FMSE) variance budget framework on SST by normalizing FMSE between theoretical upper and lower limits based on SST. The elongated channel simulations reach similar degrees of aggregation across SSTs, despite the contributions of normalized shortwave and longwave interactions decreasing with SST. High-cloud longwave interactions are the main drivers and maintainers of aggregation. Their influence decreases with SST as high clouds become less abundant. This SST-dependence is consistent with changes in grid spacing and RHcrit, however the magnitude of high-cloud longwave interactions is likely reduced as grid spacing and RHcrit are reduced. Both factors tend to decrease condensed water path and cloud top height, decreasing the anomalous longwave heating rates of these clouds. Shortwave interactions with water vapor are key maintainers of aggregation and are dependent on SST and the degree of aggregation itself. The analysis method used provides a new framework to compare the effects of radiative-convective processes on self-aggregation across different SSTs and model configurations in order to improve our understanding of self-aggregation.

The responses of tropical anvil cloud and low-level cloud to a warming climate are among the largest sources of uncertainty in our estimates of climate sensitivity. However, most research on cloud feedbacks relies on either global climate models with parameterized convection, which do not explicitly represent small-scale convective processes, or small-domain models, which cannot directly simulate large-scale circulations. We investigate how self-aggregation, the spontaneous clumping of convection in idealized numerical models, depends on cloud-radiative interactions with different cloud types, sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and stages of aggregation in simulations that form part of RCEMIP (the Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Model Intercomparison Project). Analysis shows that the presence of anvil cloud, which tends to enhance aggregation when collocated with anomalously moist environments, is reduced in nearly all models when SSTs are increased, leading to a corresponding reduction in the aggregating influence of cloud-longwave interactions. We also find that cloud-longwave radiation interactions are stronger in the majority of General Circulation Models (GCMs), typically resulting in faster aggregation compared to Cloud-system Resolving Models (CRMs). GCMs that have stronger cloud-longwave interactions tend to aggregate faster, whereas the influence of circulations is the main factor affecting the aggregation rate in CRMs.