P. Minnis

Assessment of Global Cloud Datasets from Satellites: Project and Database Initiated by the GEWEX Radiation Panel

Clouds cover about 70% of Earths surface and play a dominant role in the energy and water cycle of our planet. Only satellite observations provide a continuous survey of the state of the atmosphere over the entire globe and across the wide range of spatial and temporal scales that compose weather and climate variability. Satellite cloud data records now exceed more than 25 years; however, climate data records must be compiled from different satellite datasets and can exhibit systematic biases. Questions therefore arise as to the accuracy and limitations of the various sensors and retrieval methods. The Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Cloud Assessment, initiated in 2005 by the GEWEX Radiation Panel (GEWEX Data and Assessment Panel since 2011), provides the first coordinated intercomparison of publicly available, standard global cloud products (gridded monthly statistics) retrieved from measurements of multispectral imagers (some with multiangle view and polarization capabilities), IR soun...

Thin Liquid Water Clouds: Their Importance and Our Challenge

Abstract Many of the clouds important to the Earths energy balance, from the Tropics to the Arctic, contain small amounts of liquid water. Longwave and shortwave radiative fluxes are very sensitive to small perturbations of the cloud liquid water path (LWP), when the LWP is small (i.e., < 100 g m−2; clouds with LWP less than this threshold will be referred to as “thin”). Thus, the radiative properties of these thin liquid water clouds must be well understood to capture them correctly in climate models. We review the importance of these thin clouds to the Earths energy balance, and explain the difficulties in observing them. In particular, because these clouds are thin, potentially mixed phase, and often broken (i.e., have large 3D variability), it is challenging to retrieve their microphysical properties accurately. We describe a retrieval algorithm intercomparison that was conducted to evaluate the issues involved. The intercomparison used data collected at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) S...

Global statistics of liquid water content and effective number density of water clouds over ocean derived from combined CALIPSO and MODIS measurements

This study presents an empirical relation that links the volume extinction coefficients of water clouds, the layer integrated depolarization ratios measured by lidar, and the effective radii of water clouds derived from collocated passive sensor observations. Based on Monte Carlo simulations of CALIPSO lidar observations, this method combines the cloud effective radius reported by MODIS with the lidar depolarization ratios measured by CALIPSO to estimate both the liquid water content and the effective number concentration of water clouds. The method is applied to collocated CALIPSO and MODIS measurements obtained during July and October of 2006, and January 2007. Global statistics of the cloud liquid water content and effective number concentration are presented.

Arm research in the equatorial western pacific: A decade and counting

The tropical western Pacific (TWP) is an important climatic region. Strong solar heating, warm sea surface temperatures, and the annual progression of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) across this region generate abundant convective systems, which through their effects on the heat and water budgets have a profound impact on global climate and precipitation. In order to accurately evaluate tropical cloud systems in models, measurements of tropical clouds, the environment in which they reside, and their impact on the radiation and water budgets are needed. Because of the remote location, ground-based datasets of cloud, atmosphere, and radiation properties from the TWP region have come primarily from shortterm field experiments. While providing extremely useful information on physical processes, these short-term datasets are limited in statistical and climatological information. To provide longterm measurements of the surface radiation budget in the tropics and the atmospheric properties that affect ...

AMIE (ARM MJO Investigation Experiment): Observations of the Madden-Julian Oscillation for Modeling Studies Science Plan

Deep convection in the tropics plays an important role in driving global circulations and the transport of energy from the tropics to the mid-latitudes. Understanding the mechanisms that control tropical convection is a key to improving climate modeling simulations of the global energy balance. One of the dominant sources of tropical convective variability is the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), which has a period of approximately 30–60 days. There is no agreed-upon explanation for the underlying physics that maintain the MJO. Many climate models do not show well-defined MJO signals, and those that do have problems accurately simulating the amplitude, propagation speed, and/or seasonality of the MJO signal. Therefore, the MJO is a very important modeling target for the ARM modeling community geared specifically toward improving climate models. The ARM MJO Investigation Experiment (AMIE) period coincides with a large international MJO initiation field campaign called CINDY2011 (Cooperative Indian Ocean experiment on intraseasonal variability in the Year 2011) that will take place in and around the Indian Ocean from October 2011 to January 2012. AMIE, in conjunction with CINDY2011 efforts, will provide an unprecedented data set that will allow investigation of the evolution of convection within the framework of the MJO. AMIE observationsmorexa0» will also complement the long-term MJO statistics produced using ARM Manus data and will allow testing of several of the current hypotheses related to the MJO phenomenon. Taking advantage of the expected deployment of a C-POL scanning precipitation radar and an ECOR surface flux tower at the ARM Manus site, we propose to increase the number of sonde launches to eight per day starting in about mid-October of the field experiment year, which is climatologically a period of generally suppressed conditions at Manus and just prior to the climatologically strongest MJO period. The field experiment will last until the end of the MJO season (typically March), affording the documentation of conditions before, during, and after the peak MJO season. The increased frequency of sonde launches throughout the experimental period will provide better diurnal understanding of the thermodynamic profiles, and thus a better representation within the variational analysis data set. Finally, a small surface radiation and ceilometer system will be deployed at the PNG Lombrum Naval Base about 6 km away from the ARM Manus site in order to provide some documentation of scale variability with respect to the representativeness of the ARM measurements.«xa0less