Using CloudSat observations to evaluate cloud top heights from convection parameterization
Journal Title: Satellite Oceanography and Meteorology - Year 2017, Vol 2, Issue 2
Abstract
How high convective clouds can go is of great importance to climate. Cloud ice and liquid water that detrain near the top of convective cores are important for the formation of anvil clouds and thus impact cloud radiative forcing and the Earth’s radiation budget. This study uses CloudSat observations to evaluate convective cloud top heights in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmosphere Model (CAM5). Results show that convective cloud top heights in the tropics are much lower than observed by CloudSat, by more than 2 km on average. Temperature and moisture anomalies from climatological means are composited for convective clouds of different heights for both observations and model simulation. It is found that convective environment is warmer and moister, and the anomalies are larger for clouds of higher tops. For a given convective cloud top height, the corresponding atmosphere in CAM5 is more convectively unstable than what the CloudSat observations indicate, suggesting that there is too much entrainment into convective clouds in the model.
Authors and Affiliations
Guang Jun Zhang and Mingcheng Wang
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP678930
- DOI -
- Views 147
- Downloads 0
Role of barrier layer in the developing phase of “Category 6” super typhoon Haiyan
With the remarkable intensity of 170 knots, Typhoon Haiyan started as a tropical depression on November 3 and developed to the peak as super tropical cyclone (TC) on November 7 in 2013. This intensity makes Haiyan one of...
Seagrass distribution changes in Swan Lake of Shandong Peninsula from 1979 to 2009 inferred from satellite remote sensing data
Seagrass and associated bio-resources are very important for swan’s overwintering in Swan Lake in Rongcheng of Shandong Peninsula of China. The seagrass distribution changes, which are usually affected by the regional hu...
The sea-ice detection capability of synthetic aperture radar
Climate change, increasing activities in areas like offshore oil and gas exploration, marine transport, eco-tourism, in additional to the usual activities of northerners resident are leading to reductions in sea ice. The...
Assessing the performance of a multi-nested ocean circulation model using satellite remote sensing and in situ observations
This study presents a multi-nested ocean circulation model developed recently for the central Scotian Shelf. The model consists of four submodels downscaling from the eastern Canadian Shelf to the central Scotian Shelf....
Application of multi-window maximum cross-correlation to the mediterranean sea circulation by using MODIS data
In a previous study an improved Maximum Cross-Correlation technique, called Multi-Window Maximum Cross-Correlation (MW-MCC), was proposed, and applied to noise-free synthetic images in order to show its potential and lim...