Tristan S. L'Ecuyer

Rainfall Climate Regimes: The Relationship of Regional TRMM Rainfall Biases to the Environment

Abstract Intercomparisons of satellite rainfall products have historically focused on the issue of global mean biases. Regional and temporal variations in these biases, however, are equally important for many climate applications. This has led to a critical examination of rainfall estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) and precipitation radar (PR). Because of the time-dependent nature of these biases, it is not possible to apply corrections based on regionally defined characteristics. Instead, this paper seeks to relate PR–TMI differences to physical variables that can lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the observed differences. To simplify the analysis, issues related to differences in rainfall detection and intensity are investigated separately. For clouds identified as raining by both sensors, differences in rainfall intensity are found to be highly correlated with column water vapor. Adjusting either TMI or PR rain rates based...

Observational Evidence for the Mutual Regulation of the Tropical Hydrological Cycle and Tropical Sea Surface Temperatures

Abstract From the analysis of surface, upper-air, and satellite observations it is suggested that the hydrological cycle associated with the Madden–Julian oscillation acts in the mode of a self-regulating oscillator. The regulation occurs as a feedback between hydrological processes in the atmosphere; radiation processes; and the dynamical movement of air over the tropical oceans controling variations of rainfall, cloudiness, and sea surface temperature (SST) on time scales varying between 30 and 60 days. The conjectured feedback occurs in three main phases: (i) the destablization phase: the atmosphere becomes increasingly unstable by the combination of radiative cooling of the upper troposphere, the gradual build up of shallow convection, and the warming of the SSTs under near-clear-sky and calm conditions; (ii) the convective stage: large-scale convection develops over the region resulting in widespread heavy precipitation, deepening of the oceanic mixed layer, cooling of the SST, and moistening of the ...

An Estimation-Based Precipitation Retrieval Algorithm for Attenuating Radars

Abstract A new method for retrieving rainfall profiles from a spaceborne radar is introduced. As a result of the frequencies necessary in spaceborne radar applications, attenuation by both rainfall and liquid cloud particles is nonnegligible and must be accurately accounted for before quantitative rainfall estimates can be made. The proposed method is based on the minimization of a cost function that allows one to account for attenuation at each level directly in the iteration process. In addition, the algorithm does not invoke the Rayleigh approximation and is, therefore, applicable at wavelengths characteristic of spaceborne radars. The method is flexible with regard to the parameters to be retrieved and is well-suited for the addition of measurements from other sensors, such as a passive microwave radiometer, to constrain the retrieval. Preliminary results, using simplified assumptions of drop size distribution and particle shape, illustrate the utility of the algorithm provided the attenuation is not ...

The impact of explicit cloud boundary information on ice cloud microphysical property retrievals from infrared radiances

[1] Cirrus clouds have a profound impact on the radiation balance of the Earth–atmosphere system. Accurate representation of their radiative properties is critical to understanding climate and predicting climate change. This paper casts the split-window cirrus cloud retrieval technique in an optimal estimation framework facilitating direct inclusion of explicit cloud boundary information from complementary sensors as well as providing a suite of diagnostic tools for evaluating the dominant sources of uncertainty in all retrieved quantities. Errors in retrieved microphysical properties are used to determine the resulting errors in the calculation of global-scale radiative budgets. Uncertainties in optical depth and effective radius are found to diminish from � 45% and � 80%, respectively, in the absence of explicit cloud boundary information to � 15% and � 60% when accurate radarbased or lidar-based estimates are included. It is demonstrated that the improvements to cirrus cloud optical properties afforded by accurate cloud boundary information may lead to as much as a factor of 3 increase in the accuracy to which their impact on the Earth’s radiative balance can be modeled. Colocated infrared radiances from the ModerateResolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Earth Observing System (EOS) Aqua satellite and cloud radar observations from the CloudSat satellite will soon allow the retrieval presented here to be integrated into an operational retrieval of the vertical distribution of cloud properties on a global scale. INDEX TERMS: 0320 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Cloud physics and chemistry; 3359 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Radiative processes; 3360 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Remote sensing; 3374 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Tropical meteorology; 3394 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Instruments and techniques; KEYWORDS: cirrus clouds, split-window, CloudSat, radiative fluxes

The Tropical Oceanic Energy Budget from the TRMM Perspective. Part I: Algorithm and Uncertainties

Abstract The earths weather and climate is driven by the meridional transport of energy required to establish a global balance between incoming energy from the sun and outgoing thermal energy emitted by the atmosphere and surface. Clouds and precipitation play an integral role in the exchange of these sources of energy between the surface, atmosphere, and space—enhancing reflection of solar radiation to space, trapping thermal emission from the surface, and providing a mechanism for the direct transfer of energy to the atmosphere through the release of latent heat in precipitation. This paper introduces a new multisensor algorithm for extracting longwave, shortwave, and latent heat fluxes over oceans from the sensors aboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. The technique synthesizes complementary information from distinct retrievals of high and low clouds and precipitation from the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and Visible and Infrared Scanner (VIRS) instruments to initialize broadb...

The Observed State of the Water Cycle in the Early Twenty-First Century

AbstractThis study quantifies mean annual and monthly fluxes of Earth’s water cycle over continents and ocean basins during the first decade of the millennium. To the extent possible, the flux estimates are based on satellite measurements first and data-integrating models second. A careful accounting of uncertainty in the estimates is included. It is applied within a routine that enforces multiple water and energy budget constraints simultaneously in a variational framework in order to produce objectively determined optimized flux estimates. In the majority of cases, the observed annual surface and atmospheric water budgets over the continents and oceans close with much less than 10% residual. Observed residuals and optimized uncertainty estimates are considerably larger for monthly surface and atmospheric water budget closure, often nearing or exceeding 20% in North America, Eurasia, Australia and neighboring islands, and the Arctic and South Atlantic Oceans. The residuals in South America and Africa ten...

Influence of Ice Particle Surface Roughening on the Global Cloud Radiative Effect

AbstractIce clouds influence the climate system by changing the radiation budget and large-scale circulation. Therefore, climate models need to have an accurate representation of ice clouds and their radiative effects. In this paper, new broadband parameterizations for ice cloud bulk scattering properties are developed for severely roughened ice particles. The parameterizations are based on a general habit mixture that includes nine habits (droxtals, hollow/solid columns, plates, solid/hollow bullet rosettes, aggregate of solid columns, and small/large aggregates of plates). The scattering properties for these individual habits incorporate recent advances in light-scattering computations. The influence of ice particle surface roughness on the ice cloud radiative effect is determined through simulations with the Fu–Liou and the GCM version of the Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTMG) codes and the National Center for Atmospheric Research Community Atmosphere Model (CAM, version 5.1). The differences in sh...

The Evaluation of CloudSat and CALIPSO Ice Microphysical Products Using Ground-Based Cloud Radar and Lidar Observations

In this paper, the statistical properties of tropical ice clouds (ice water content, visible extinction, effective radius, and total number concentration) derived from 3 yr of ground-based radar–lidar retrievals from the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility in Darwin, Australia, are compared with the same properties derived using the official CloudSat microphysical retrieval methods and from a simpler statistical method using radar reflectivity and air temperature. It is shown that the two official CloudSat microphysical products (2B-CWC-RO and 2B-CWC-RVOD) are statistically virtually identical. The comparison with the ground-based radar–lidar retrievals shows that all satellite methods produce ice water contents and extinctions in a much narrower range than the ground-based method and overestimate the mean vertical profiles of microphysical parameters below 10-km height by over a factor of 2. Better agreements are obtained above 10-km height. Ways to improve these estimates are suggested in this study. Effective radii retrievals from the standard CloudSat algorithms are characterized by a large positive bias of 8–12 mm. A sensitivity test shows that in response to such a bias the cloud longwave forcing is increased from 44.6 to 46.9 W m 22 (implying an error of about 5%), whereas the negative cloud shortwave forcing is increased from 281.6 to 282.8 W m 22 . Further analysis reveals that these modest effects (although not insignificant) can be much larger for optically thick clouds. The statistical method usingCloudSat reflectivities and air temperature was found to produce inaccurate mean vertical profiles and probability distribution functions of effective radius. This study also shows that the retrieval of the total number concentration needs to be improved in the official CloudSat microphysical methods prior to a quantitative use for the characterization of tropical ice clouds. Finally, the statistical relationship used to produce ice water content from extinction and air temperature obtained by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite is evaluated for tropical ice clouds. It is suggested that the CALIPSO ice water content retrieval is robust for tropical ice clouds, but that the temperature dependence of the statistical relationship used should be slightly refined to better reproduce the radar–lidar retrievals.

MJO Signals in Latent Heating: Results from TRMM Retrievals

Abstract Four Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) datasets of latent heating were diagnosed for signals in the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). In all four datasets, vertical structures of latent heating are dominated by two components—one deep with its peak above the melting level and one shallow with its peak below. Profiles of the two components are nearly ubiquitous in longitude, allowing a separation of the vertical and zonal/temporal variations when the latitudinal dependence is not considered. All four datasets exhibit robust MJO spectral signals in the deep component as eastward propagating spectral peaks centered at a period of 50 days and zonal wavenumber 1, well distinguished from lower- and higher-frequency power and much stronger than the corresponding westward power. The shallow component shows similar but slightly less robust MJO spectral peaks. MJO signals were further extracted from a combination of bandpass (30–90 day) filtered deep and shallow components. Largest amplitudes of bo...

Estimates of Tropical Diabatic Heating Profiles: Commonalities and Uncertainties

This study aims to evaluate the consistency and discrepancies in estimates of diabatic heating profiles associated with precipitation based on satellite observations and microphysics and those derived from the thermodynamics of the large-scale environment. It presents a survey of diabatic heating profile estimates from four Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) products, four global reanalyses, and in situ sounding measurements from eight field campaigns at various tropical locations. Common in most of the estimates are the following: (i) bottom-heavy profiles, ubiquitous over the oceans, are associated with relatively low rain rates, while top-heavy profiles are generally associated with high rain rates; (ii) temporal variability of latent heating profiles is dominated by two modes, a deep mode with a peak in the upper troposphere and a shallow mode with a low-level peak; and (iii) the structure of the deep modes is almost the same in different estimates and different regions in the tropics. The primary uncertainty is in the amount of shallow heating over the tropical oceans, which differs substantially among the estimates.