Observed Microphysical and Radiative Structure of Mid-Level, Mixed-Phase Clouds

Observed Microphysical and Radiative Structure of Mid-Level, Mixed-Phase Clouds PDF Author: Robert P. Fleishauer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781423527428
Category : Atmospheric
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Airborne measurements of six mid-level clouds observed over the Great Plains of the United States in late 1999 and early 2000 are analyzed extensively. All cloud fields are associated with a 500-mb low-pressure center or a potential vorticity maximum, with additional lift provided by upper-level jet streams. Data show that these innocuous looking clouds display complicated microphysical and thermodynamic structures. Five of six cases include mixed- phase conditions in temperatures ranging from near freezing to -3l C, at altitudes of 2400 to 7200 m. Four of the cases consist of a single cloud layer, while the other two are multi-layered systems. Of particular note, in single- layered clouds, there is an increase of liquid water content with height versus a decrease in ice water content over the same depth. This is in contrast to multi-layered systems, where the liquid water content has the same basic shape, but the ice water content is distributed more uniformly throughout all layers. We attribute these structural differences to a seeder-feeder mechanism operating in the multi-layered systems. A lack of temperature inversions in these mid- level clouds is a major difference from the thermodynamic structure of most stratocumulus systems. We found the virtual potential temperature to be the best discriminator of cloud interfaces for mid-level clouds, with 1-2 C differences between ambient and cloud air. A noteworthy contribution to this observational study was the use of the Cloud Particle Imager (CPI) instrument for the qualitative analysis of the particle sizes, shapes, habits, and distributions through the cloud. An analysis of the liquid water budget of a Lagrangian cloud sample revealed that large-scale subsidence was the main mechanism responsible for its dissipation. Heating rates and fluxes are computed for each cloud using a single-column radiative transfer model. OBSERVED MICROPHYSICAL AND RADIATIVE STRUCTURE OF MID-LEVEL, MIXED-PHASE CLOUDS

Observed Microphysical and Radiative Structure of Mid-Level, Mixed-Phase Clouds

Observed Microphysical and Radiative Structure of Mid-Level, Mixed-Phase Clouds PDF Author: Robert P. Fleishauer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781423527428
Category : Atmospheric
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Airborne measurements of six mid-level clouds observed over the Great Plains of the United States in late 1999 and early 2000 are analyzed extensively. All cloud fields are associated with a 500-mb low-pressure center or a potential vorticity maximum, with additional lift provided by upper-level jet streams. Data show that these innocuous looking clouds display complicated microphysical and thermodynamic structures. Five of six cases include mixed- phase conditions in temperatures ranging from near freezing to -3l C, at altitudes of 2400 to 7200 m. Four of the cases consist of a single cloud layer, while the other two are multi-layered systems. Of particular note, in single- layered clouds, there is an increase of liquid water content with height versus a decrease in ice water content over the same depth. This is in contrast to multi-layered systems, where the liquid water content has the same basic shape, but the ice water content is distributed more uniformly throughout all layers. We attribute these structural differences to a seeder-feeder mechanism operating in the multi-layered systems. A lack of temperature inversions in these mid- level clouds is a major difference from the thermodynamic structure of most stratocumulus systems. We found the virtual potential temperature to be the best discriminator of cloud interfaces for mid-level clouds, with 1-2 C differences between ambient and cloud air. A noteworthy contribution to this observational study was the use of the Cloud Particle Imager (CPI) instrument for the qualitative analysis of the particle sizes, shapes, habits, and distributions through the cloud. An analysis of the liquid water budget of a Lagrangian cloud sample revealed that large-scale subsidence was the main mechanism responsible for its dissipation. Heating rates and fluxes are computed for each cloud using a single-column radiative transfer model. OBSERVED MICROPHYSICAL AND RADIATIVE STRUCTURE OF MID-LEVEL, MIXED-PHASE CLOUDS

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.

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.

Mixed-phase Clouds, Thin Cirrus Clouds, and OLR Over the Tropics

Mixed-phase Clouds, Thin Cirrus Clouds, and OLR Over the Tropics PDF Author: Joonsuk Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The tropics is a very important region in terms of earth0́9s radiation budget because the net radiative heating is largest in the tropics and that surplus energy is redistributed by the circulations of oceans and atmospheres. Moreover, a large number of clouds are formed by deep convection and convergence of water vapor. Thus, it is very important to understand the radiative energy balance of the tropics and the effect of clouds on the radiation field. For mixed-phase clouds, error analyses pertaining to the inference of effective particle sizes and optical thicknesses are performed. Errors are calculated with respect to the assumption of a cloud containing solely liquid or ice phase particles. The analyses suggest that the effective particle size inferred for a mixed-phase cloud can be underestimated (or overestimated) if a pure liquid phase (or pure ice phase) is assumed for the cloud, whereas the corresponding cloud optical thickness can be overestimated (or underestimated). The analyses of optical depth and fraction of occurrence for thin cirrus clouds showed that about 40% of pixels flagged as clear-sky contain detectible thin cirrus clouds. The regions of high occurrence and large optical depth located around deep convection showed seasonal variations. The thin cirrus clouds occur more frequently with larger optical depth in the northern (southern) hemisphere during spring and summer (autumn and winter). The net cloud radiative forcing by thin cirrus clouds is positive at the top of atmosphere and is negative at the bottom of atmosphere. The difference in OLR between measurement and model is 4.2 Wm-2 for September 2005. The difference is smaller in moist regions and larger in drier regions. OLR increases with increasing surface temperatures up to 300 K but decreases at surface temperatures larger than 300 K due to the strong absorption of increased water vapor. In summary, if the surface temperature is lower than the threshold of convection (300 K), temperature is a dominant factor in OLR and if the surface temperature is larger than 300 K, OLR is strongly influenced by water vapor.

Fine-scale Horizontal Structure of Arctic Mixed-Phase Clouds

Fine-scale Horizontal Structure of Arctic Mixed-Phase Clouds PDF Author: M. Shupe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Recent in situ observations in stratiform clouds suggest that mixed phase regimes, here defined as limited cloud volumes containing both liquid and solid water, are constrained to narrow layers (order 100 m) separating all-liquid and fully glaciated volumes (Hallett and Viddaurre, 2005). The Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program's (DOE-ARM, Ackerman and Stokes, 2003) North Slope of Alaska (NSA) ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF) recently started collecting routine measurement of radar Doppler velocity power spectra from the Millimeter Cloud Radar (MMCR). Shupe et al. (2004) showed that Doppler spectra has potential to separate the contributions to the total reflectivity of the liquid and solid water in the radar volume, and thus to investigate further Hallett and Viddaurre's findings. The Mixed-Phase Arctic Cloud Experiment (MPACE) was conducted along the NSA to investigate the properties of Arctic mixed phase clouds (Verlinde et al., 2006). We present surface based remote sensing data from MPACE to discuss the fine-scale structure of the mixed-phase clouds observed during this experiment.

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.

Final Report

Final Report PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This final report summarizes the major accomplishments and products resulting from a three-year grant funded by the DOE, Office of Science, Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program titled: An Investigation of the Microphysical, Radiative, and Dynamical Properties of Mixed-Phase Clouds. Accomplishments are listed under the following subcategories: Mixed-phase cloud retrieval method development; Mixed-phase cloud characterization; ARM mixed-phase cloud retrieval review; and New ARM MICROBASE product. In addition, lists are provided of service to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program, data products provided to the broader research community, and publications resulting from this grant.

Arctic Mixed-phase Clouds

Arctic Mixed-phase Clouds PDF Author: Katharina Loewe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781013281211
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.

Observed and Calculated Properties of Mid-level, Mixed-phase Clouds

Observed and Calculated Properties of Mid-level, Mixed-phase Clouds PDF Author: Curtis J. Seaman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cloud physics
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description