Microphysical Properties of Single and Mixed-phase Arctic Clouds Derived from Ground-based AERI Observations

Microphysical Properties of Single and Mixed-phase Arctic Clouds Derived from Ground-based AERI Observations PDF Author: David D. Turner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Microphysical Properties of Single and Mixed-phase Arctic Clouds Derived from Ground-based AERI Observations

Microphysical Properties of Single and Mixed-phase Arctic Clouds Derived from Ground-based AERI Observations PDF Author: David D. Turner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Microphysical Properties of Single and Mixed-Phase Arctic Clouds Derived from AERI Observations

Microphysical Properties of Single and Mixed-Phase Arctic Clouds Derived from AERI Observations PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
A novel new approach to retrieve cloud microphysical properties from mixed-phase clouds is presented. This algorithm retrieves cloud optical depth, ice fraction, and the effective size of the water and ice particles from ground-based, high-resolution infrared radiance observations. The theoretical basis is that the absorption coefficient of ice is stronger than that of liquid water from 10-13 mm, whereas liquid water is more absorbing than ice from 16-25 um. However, due to strong absorption in the rotational water vapor absorption band, the 16-25 um spectral region becomes opaque for significant water vapor burdens (id est, for precipitable water vapor amounts over approximately 1 cm). The Arctic is characterized by its dry and cold atmosphere, as well as a preponderance of mixed-phase clouds, and thus this approach is applicable to Arctic clouds. Since this approach uses infrared observations, cloud properties are retrieved at night and during the long polar wintertime period. The analysis of the cloud properties retrieved during a 7 month period during the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic (SHEBA) experiment demonstrates many interesting features. These results show a dependence of the optical depth on cloud phase, differences in the mode radius of the water droplets in liquid-only and mid-phase clouds, a lack of temperature dependence in the ice fraction for temperatures above 240 K, seasonal trends in the optical depth with the clouds being thinner in winter and becoming more optically thick in the late spring, and a seasonal trend in the effective size of the water droplets in liquid-only and mixed-phase clouds that is most likely related to aerosol concentration.

Mixed-Phase Clouds

Mixed-Phase Clouds PDF Author: Constantin Andronache
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 012810550X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Mixed-Phase Clouds: Observations and Modeling presents advanced research topics on mixed-phase clouds. As the societal impacts of extreme weather and its forecasting grow, there is a continuous need to refine atmospheric observations, techniques and numerical models. Understanding the role of clouds in the atmosphere is increasingly vital for current applications, such as prediction and prevention of aircraft icing, weather modification, and the assessment of the effects of cloud phase partition in climate models. This book provides the essential information needed to address these problems with a focus on current observations, simulations and applications. - Provides in-depth knowledge and simulation of mixed-phase clouds over many regions of Earth, explaining their role in weather and climate - Features current research examples and case studies, including those on advanced research methods from authors with experience in both academia and the industry - Discusses the latest advances in this subject area, providing the reader with access to best practices for remote sensing and numerical modeling

Arctic mixed-phase clouds : Macro- and microphysical insights with a numerical model

Arctic mixed-phase clouds : Macro- and microphysical insights with a numerical model PDF Author: Loewe, Katharina
Publisher: KIT Scientific Publishing
ISBN: 3731506866
Category : Physics
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This work provides new insights into macro- and microphysical properties of Arctic mixed-phase clouds: first, by comparing semi-idealized large eddy simulations with observations; second, by dissecting the influences of different surface types and boundary layer structures on Arctic mixed- phase clouds; third, by elucidating the dissipation process; and finally by analyzing the main microphysical processes inside Arctic mixed-phase clouds.

Arctic Mixed-phase Clouds

Arctic Mixed-phase Clouds PDF Author: Katharina Loewe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013281204
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
This work provides new insights into macro- and microphysical properties of Arctic mixed-phase clouds: first, by comparing semi-idealized large eddy simulations with observations; second, by dissecting the influences of different surface types and boundary layer structures on Arctic mixed- phase clouds; third, by elucidating the dissipation process; and finally by analyzing the main microphysical processes inside Arctic mixed-phase clouds. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Testing Cloud Microphysics Parameterizations and Improving the Representation of the Wegner-Bergeron-Findeisen Process in Mixed-phase Clouds in NCAR CAM5

Testing Cloud Microphysics Parameterizations and Improving the Representation of the Wegner-Bergeron-Findeisen Process in Mixed-phase Clouds in NCAR CAM5 PDF Author: Meng Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780355325027
Category : Arctic regions
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Mixed-phase clouds are persistently observed in the Arctic and the phase partition of cloud liquid and ice in mixed-phase clouds has important impacts on the surface energy budget and Arctic climate. In this study, we test the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model Version 5 (CAM5) in the single-column and weather forecast modes and evaluate the model performance against observation data obtained during the DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program’s M-PACE field campaign in October 2004 and long-term ground-based multi-sensor measurements. We find that CAM5, like other global climate models, poorly simulates the phase partition in mixed-phase clouds by significantly underestimating the cloud liquid water content. An assumption of the pocket structure in the distribution of cloud liquid and ice based on in situ observations inside mixed-phase clouds has provided a possible solution to improve the model performance by reducing the Wegner-Bergeron-Findeisen (WBF) process rate. In this study, the modification of the WBF process in the CAM5 model has been achieved with applying a stochastic perturbation to the time scale of the WBF process relevant to both ice and snow to account for the heterogeneous mixture of cloud liquid and ice. Our results show that the modification of the WBF process improves the modeled phase partition in mixed-phase clouds. The seasonality of mixed-phase cloud properties is also better captured in the model compared with long-term ground-based remote sensing observations. Furthermore, the phase partitioning is insensitive to the reassignment time step of perturbations.

Variability in Microphysical Properties of Mixed-phase Arctic Clouds

Variability in Microphysical Properties of Mixed-phase Arctic Clouds PDF Author: David Lloyd Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Atmospheric radiation
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Arctic Mixed Phase Cloud Microphysical Properties Deduced from Arm Surface and Aircraft Measurements During M-PACE

Arctic Mixed Phase Cloud Microphysical Properties Deduced from Arm Surface and Aircraft Measurements During M-PACE PDF Author: Hongchun Jin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cloud physics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Evaluation of Mixed-Phase Cloud Microphysics Parameterizations with the NCAR Single Column Climate Model (SCAM) and ARM Observations

Evaluation of Mixed-Phase Cloud Microphysics Parameterizations with the NCAR Single Column Climate Model (SCAM) and ARM Observations PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Mixed-phase stratus clouds are ubiquitous in the Arctic and play an important role in climate in this region. However, climate models have generally proven unsuccessful at simulating the partitioning of condensed water into liquid droplets and ice crystals in these Arctic clouds, which affect modeled cloud phase, cloud lifetime and radiative properties. An ice nucleation parameterization and a vapor deposition scheme were developed that together provide a physically-consistent treatment of mixed-phase clouds in global climate models. These schemes have been implemented in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Atmospheric Model Version 3 (CAM3). This report documents the performance of these schemes against ARM Mixed-phase Arctic Cloud Experiment (M-PACE) observations using the CAM single column model version (SCAM). SCAM with our new schemes has a more realistic simulation of the cloud phase structure and the partitioning of condensed water into liquid droplets against observations during the M-PACE than the standard CAM simulations.

The Arctic Clouds from Model Simulations and Long-term Observations at Barrow, Alaska

The Arctic Clouds from Model Simulations and Long-term Observations at Barrow, Alaska PDF Author: Ming Zhao
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781303050398
Category : Arctic regions
Languages : en
Pages : 93

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Book Description
The Arctic is a region that is very sensitive to global climate change while also experiencing significant changes in its surface air temperature, sea-ice cover, atmospheric circulation, precipitation, snowfall, biogeochemical cycling, and land surface. Although previous studies have shown that the arctic clouds play an important role in the arctic climate changes, the arctic clouds are poorly understood and simulated in climate model due to limited observations. Furthermore, most of the studies were based on short-term experiments and typically only cover the warm seasons, which do not provide a full understanding of the seasonal cycle of arctic clouds. To address the above concerns and to improve our understanding of arctic clouds, six years of observational and retrieval data from 1999 to 2004 at the Atmospheric Radiation Management (ARM) Climate Research Facility (ACRF) North Slope of Alaska (NSA) Barrow site are used to understand the arctic clouds and related radiative processes. In particular, we focus on the liquid-ice mass partition in the mixed-phase cloud layer. Statistical results show that aerosol type and concentration are important factors that impact the mixed-phase stratus (MPS) cloud microphysical properties: liquid water path (LWP) and liquid water fraction (LWF) decrease with the increase of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) number concentration; the high dust loading and dust occurrence in the spring are possible reasons for the much lower LWF than the other seasons. The importance of liquid-ice mass partition on surface radiation budgets was analyzed by comparing cloud longwave radiative forcings under the same LWP but different ice water path (IWP) ranges. Results show the ice phase enhance the surface cloud longwave (LW) forcing by 8~9 W m−2 in the moderately thin MPS. This result provides an observational evidence on the aerosol glaciation effect in the moderately thin MPS, which is largely unknown so far. The above new insights are important to guide the model parameterizations of liquid-ice mass partition in arctic mixed-phase clouds, and are served as a test bed to cloud models and cloud microphysical schemes. The observational data between 1999 and 2007 are used to assess the performance of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) model in the Arctic region. The ECMWF model-simulated near-surface humidity had seasonal dependent biases as large as 20%, while also experiencing difficulty representing boundary layer (BL) temperature inversion height and strength during the transition seasons. Although the ECMWF model captured the seasonal variation of surface heat fluxes, it had sensible heat flux biases over 20 W m−2 in most of the cold months. Furthermore, even though the model captured the general seasonal variations of low-level cloud fraction (LCF) and LWP, it still overestimated the LCF by 20% or more and underestimated the LWP over 50% in the cold season. On average, the ECMWF model underestimated LWP by ~30 g m−2 but more accurately predicted ice water path for BL clouds. For BL mixed-phase clouds, the model predicted water-ice mass partition was significantly lower than the observations, largely due to the temperature dependence of water-ice mass partition used in the model. The new cloud and BL schemes of the ECMWF model that were implemented after 2003 only resulted in minor improvements in BL cloud simulations in summer. These results indicate that significant improvements in cold season BL and mixed-phase cloud processes in the model are needed. In this study, single-layer MPS clouds were simulated by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model under different microphysical schemes and different ice nuclei (IN) number concentrations. Results show that by using proper IN concentration, the WRF model incorporated with Morrison microphysical scheme can reasonably capture the observed seasonal differences in temperature dependent liquid-ice mass partition. However, WRF simulations underestimate both LWP and IWP indicating its deficiency in capturing the radiative impacts of arctic MPS clouds.