Contrasting the co-variability of daytime cloud and precipitation over tropical land and ocean.

The co-variability of cloud and precipitation in the extended tropics (35°N-35°S) is investigated using contemporaneous data sets for a 13-year period. The goal is to quantify potential relationships between cloud type fractions and precipitation events of particular strength. Particular attention is paid to whether the relationships exhibit different characteristics over tropical land and ocean. A primary analysis metric is the correlation coefficient between fractions of individual cloud types and frequencies within precipitation histogram bins that have been matched in time and space. The cloud type fractions are derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) joint histograms of cloud top pressure and cloud optical thickness in 1°grid cells, and the precipitation frequencies come from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) data set aggregated to the same grid. It is found that the strongest coupling (positive correlation) between clouds and precipitation occurs over ocean for cumulonimbus clouds and the heaviest rainfall. While the same cloud type and rainfall bin are also best correlated over land compared to other combinations, the correlation magnitude is weaker than over ocean. The difference is attributed to the greater size of convective systems over ocean. It is also found that both over ocean and land the anti-correlation of strong precipitation with "weak" (i.e., thin and/or low) cloud types is of greater absolute strength than positive correlations between weak cloud types and weak precipitation. Cloud type co-occurrence relationships explain some of the cloud-precipitation anti-correlations. Weak correlations between weaker rainfall and clouds indicate poor predictability for precipitation when cloud types are known, and this is even more true over land than over ocean.

Erratum: Strong constraints on aerosol-cloud interactions from volcanic eruptions.

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/nature22974.

Strong constraints on aerosol-cloud interactions from volcanic eruptions.

Aerosols have a potentially large effect on climate, particularly through their interactions with clouds, but the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain. Large volcanic eruptions produce sulfur dioxide, which in turn produces aerosols; these eruptions thus represent a natural experiment through which to quantify aerosol-cloud interactions. Here we show that the massive 2014-2015 fissure eruption in Holuhraun, Iceland, reduced the size of liquid cloud droplets-consistent with expectations-but had no discernible effect on other cloud properties. The reduction in droplet size led to cloud brightening and global-mean radiative forcing of around -0.2 watts per square metre for September to October 2014. Changes in cloud amount or cloud liquid water path, however, were undetectable, indicating that these indirect effects, and cloud systems in general, are well buffered against aerosol changes. This result will reduce uncertainties in future climate projections, because we are now able to reject results from climate models with an excessive liquid-water-path response.

Using MODIS Cloud Regimes to Sort Diagnostic Signals of Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation Interactions.

Coincident multi-year measurements of aerosol, cloud, precipitation and radiation at near-global scales are analyzed to diagnose their apparent relationships as suggestive of interactions previously proposed based on theoretical, observational, and model constructs. Specifically, we examine whether differences in aerosol loading in separate observations go along with consistently different precipitation, cloud properties, and cloud radiative effects. Our analysis uses a cloud regime (CR) framework to dissect and sort the results. The CRs come from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor and are defined as distinct groups of cloud systems with similar co-variations of cloud top pressure and cloud optical thickness. Aerosol optical depth used as proxy for aerosol loading comes from two sources, MODIS observations, and the MERRA-2 re-analysis, and its variability is defined with respect to local seasonal climatologies. The choice of aerosol dataset impacts our results substantially. We also find that the responses of the marine and continental component of a CR are frequently quite disparate. Overall, CRs dominated by warm clouds tend to exhibit less ambiguous signals, but also have more uncertainty with regard to precipitation changes. Finally, we find weak, but occasionally systematic co-variations of select meteorological indicators and aerosol, which serves as a sober reminder that ascribing changes in cloud and cloud-affected variables solely to aerosol variations is precarious.

New Insights about Cloud Vertical Structure from CloudSat and CALIPSO observations.

Active cloud observations from A-Train's CloudSat and CALIPSO satellites offer new opportunities to examine the vertical structure of hydrometeor layers. We use the 2B-CLDCLASS-LIDAR merged CloudSat-CALIPSO product to examine global aspects of hydrometeor vertical stratification. We group the data into major Cloud Vertical Structure (CVS) classes based on our interpretation of how clouds in three standard atmospheric layers overlap, and provide their global frequency of occurrence. The two most frequent CVS classes are single-layer (per our definition) low and high clouds which represent ~53% of cloudy skies, followed by high clouds overlying low clouds, and vertically extensive clouds that occupy near-contiguously a large portion of the troposphere. The prevalence of these configurations changes seasonally and geographically, between daytime and nighttime, and between continents and oceans. The radiative effects of the CVS classes reveal the major radiative warmers and coolers from the perspective of the planet as a whole, the surface, and the atmosphere. Single-layer low clouds dominate planetary and atmospheric cooling, and thermal infrared surface warming. We also investigate the consistency between passive and active views of clouds by providing the CVS breakdowns of MODIS cloud regimes for spatiotemporally coincident MODIS-Aqua (also on the A-Train) and CloudSat-CALIPSO daytime observations. When the analysis is expanded for a more in-depth look at the most heterogeneous of the MODIS cloud regimes, it ultimately confirms previous interpretations of their makeup that did not have the benefit of collocated active observations.

Radiative effects of global MODIS cloud regimes.

We update previously published MODIS global cloud regimes (CRs) using the latest MODIS cloud retrievals in the Collection 6 dataset. We implement a slightly different derivation method, investigate the composition of the regimes, and then proceed to examine several aspects of CR radiative appearance with the aid of various radiative flux datasets. Our results clearly show the CRs are radiatively distinct in terms of shortwave, longwave and their combined (total) cloud radiative effect. We show that we can clearly distinguish regimes based on whether they radiatively cool or warm the atmosphere, and thanks to radiative heating profiles to discern the vertical distribution of cooling and warming. Terra and Aqua comparisons provide information about the degree to which morning and afternoon occurrences of regimes affect the symmetry of CR radiative contribution. We examine how the radiative discrepancies among multiple irradiance datasets suffering from imperfect spatiotemporal matching depend on CR, and whether they are therefore related to the complexity of cloud structure, its interpretation by different observational systems, and its subsequent representation in radiative transfer calculations.

Effects of ozone and aerosol on surface UV radiation variability.

Global (direct+diffuse) spectral ultraviolet (UV, 290-363nm) and total ozone measurements made on the roof of the Main Science Building, Yonsei University at Seoul (37.57°, 128.98°E) were analyzed to quantify the effects of ozone and aerosol on the variability of surface erythemal UV (EUV) irradiance. The measurements have been made with a Brewer Spectrophotometer MKIV (SCI-TEC#148) and a Dobson Ozone Spectrophotometer (Beck#123), respectively, during 2004-2008. The overall mean radiation amplification factor, RAF(AOD, SZA) [23,24] due to total ozone (O(3)) (hereafter O(3) RAF) shows that 1% decrease in total ozone results in an increase of 1.18±0.02% in the EUV irradiance with the range of 0.67-1.74% depending on solar zenith angles (SZAs) (40-70°) and on aerosol optical depths (AODs) (<4.0), under both clear (cloud cover<25%) and all sky conditions. For the mean AOD, the O(3) RAFs(SZA) for both sky conditions increased as SZA increased from 40° to 60°, and then decreased for higher SZA 70°, where the patterns are consistent with results of the previous studies [2,10]. A similar analysis of the RAF(O(3), SZA) due to AOD (hereafter AOD RAF) under clear and all-sky conditions shows that on average, a 1% increase in AOD forces a decrease of 0.29±0.06% in the EUV irradiance with the maximum range 0.18-0.63% depending on SZAs and O(3). Thus, overall sensitivity of UV to ozone (O(3), RAF) was estimated to be about four times higher than to the aerosol (AOD RAF). At the mean O(3), the AOD RAFs(SZA) for both skies appears to be almost independent of SZAs. It is shown that the O(3) RAFs are nearly independent of the sky conditions, whereas the AOD RAFs depend distinctly on the sky conditions with the larger values for all skies. Under cloud free conditions, the overall mean ratio for measured-to-modeled O(3), RAF(AOD, SZA) is 1.13, whereas the ratio for AOD RAF(O(3), SZA) shows 0.82 in the EUV irradiance. Overall, the RAF measurements are corroborated by radiative transfer model calculations under clear-sky conditions.