b. Degree of Convective Aggregation
Different metrics have been used to quantify the degree of aggregation under different circumstances such as the “organization index” that detects organized convective features using satellite observed infrared brightness temperatures (Bony et al., 2020; Tompkins & Semie, 2017), subsidence fraction (Coppin & Bony, 2015), the spatial variance of column relative humidity (Wing & Cronin, 2016) and the spatial variance of column integrated water vapor (Dai & Soden, 2020; Wing et al., 2020). In this study, we characterize the spatial organization of convection using subsidence fraction, which is computed as the fractional area covered by subsidence based on daily vertical pressure velocity at 500 hPa \(\left(\omega_{500}\right)\). We note that using the spatial variance of column integrated water vapor yields similar results.