LASP Science Seminars

Marine clouds represent the largest uncertainty in climate projections.  Their complex microphysical properties and dynamical coupling with turbulence and the large-scale circulation make them particularly difficult to model.  In this talk, I show how the accumulating record of historical satellite observations during the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) era and ESA/JAXA’s new satellite observations of clouds can be used to validate and improve model representations of clouds.  In the first part of my talk, I present a technique we developed to achieve this by partitioning contributions of dynamical and thermodynamical effects to the cloud radiative feedback applied to MODIS and ISCCP satellite observations.  In the latter part of my talk, I present new observations obtained by EarthCARE’s doppler Cloud Profiling Radar and show how we can infer the role or riming in Lagrangian-tracked Arctic marine cold air outbreak clouds.