Evidence for a Third aerosol Indirect Effect from Ship Tracks Observed by Calipso

Ship tracks are a phenomenon that provide a unique way of studying aerosol effects on clouds because the regions of clouds that are heavily contaminated by pollution can be separated from adjacent regions of clean clouds formed in a marine boundary layer. Ship tracks have been used to study the 1st indirect radiative effect (Twomey, 1974) and also the 2nd indirect effect (Albrecht, 1989) because they often persist while the surrounding unpolluted clouds dissipate. A 3rd indirect effect is the change to cloud geometrical depth associated with the reduced precipitation in polluted clouds (Pincus and Baker, 1995). Presented for the first time, the vertical structure of ship tracks are used to confirm the presence of this 3rd indirect effect. Using the Lidar from Calipso, high vertical resolution data of cloud top height along ship track cross sections were used to calculate differences in height between ship tracks and the clean clouds adjacent to them. Using MODIS imagery to locate ship tracks collocated to the Calipso orbital track, over 100 ship track vertical profiles were used in the analysis. In addition, atmospheric stability was assessed for each ship track using temperature and moisture data from the ECMWF-AUX product collocated to the Calipso orbit. Height differences between ship tracks and unpolluted clouds were found to be strongly correlated with cloud cover fraction, dew point depression above cloud top, and lower tropospheric static stability. Ship tracks were most often observed to be elevated above the surrounding clouds by approximately 100 - 200 meters when the cloud cover fraction was below 90% and capped by a weak temperature inversion. Ship tracks were not elevated above the surrounding clouds when either cloud cover fraction was high, the stability was high, or the air above the clouds was dry. Since mean cloud top heights were about 650 m, ship tracks in partly cloudy regions were often elevated above the surrounding clouds by ~15-30%. The results presented here suggest that the 3rd indirect effect is most often observed for ship tracks when the cloud cover fraction is low, capped by a weak temperature inversion, with relatively moist air above the boundary layer.