Use of In-Situ Cloud Probe Data to Derive Bulk Cloud Parameters and Their Uncertainties: Impacts for Models and Remote Sensing Retrievals
Abstract
A better characterization of not only the base state of ice microphysical properties and processes, but also of their uncertainty and variability, is needed to better represent cloud microphysics in model parameterization schemes and remote sensing retrievals. In this presentation, the linkage between observed ice crystal properties (mean properties, distributions of variables) and environmental conditions is investigated using data from in-situ aircraft observations obtained in the Tropics, Arctic and mid-latitudes during recent field campaigns such as the Tropical Warm Pool International Cloud Experiment (TWP-ICE), the Indirect and Semi-Direct Aerosol Campaign (ISDAC), and the Small Particles in Cirrus (SPARTICUS) campaign. In particular, the dependence of ice crystal aspect ratios, habit distributions, and the slope, intercept and shape parameter of gamma functions describing ice particle size distributions and their uncertainties are determined as a function of geographic location, total water content and ice cloud formation mechanism. Implications for the representation of ice cloud microphysics in models with a variety of scales is are discussed by establishing how the uncertainty in ice cloud microphysics affects the representation of mass-weighted terminal velocity.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFM.A43H..06M
- Keywords:
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- 0321 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE Cloud/radiation interaction;
- 0320 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE Cloud physics and chemistry;
- 3310 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES Clouds and cloud feedbacks;
- 3311 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES Clouds and aerosols