Long-Term Retrievals of Cloud Type and Fair-Weather Shallow Cumulus Events at the ARM SGP Site

Details

• Journal Title:
  Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology
• Personal Author:
  Lim, Kyo-Sun Sunny ; Riihimaki, Laura D. ; Shi, Yan ; Flynn, Donna ; Kleiss, Jessica M. ; Berg, Larry K. ; Gustafson Jr., William I. ; Zhang, Yunyan ; Johnson, Karen L.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences)
• Description:
  A long-term climatology of classified cloud types has been generated for 13 years (1997–2009) over the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site for seven cloud categories: low clouds, congestus, deep convection, altocumulus, altostratus, cirrostratus/anvil, and cirrus. The classification was based on the cloud macrophysical quantities of cloud top, cloud base, and physical thickness of cloud layers, as measured by active sensors such as the millimeter-wavelength cloud radar (MMCR) and micropulse lidar (MPL). Climate variability of cloud characteristics has been examined using the 13-yr cloud-type retrieval. Low clouds and cirrus showed distinct diurnal and seasonal cycles. Total cloud occurrence followed the variation of low clouds, with a diurnal peak in early afternoon and a seasonal maximum in late winter. Additionally, further work has been done to identify fair-weather shallow cumulus (FWSC) events for 9 years (2000–08). Periods containing FWSC, a subcategory of clouds classified as low clouds, were produced using cloud fraction information from a total-sky imager and ceilometer. The identified FWSC periods in our study show good agreement with manually identified FWSC, missing only 6 cases out of 70 possible events during the spring to summer seasons (May–August).
• Keywords:
  Clouds Remote Sensing Remote Sensing
• Source:
  J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol. (2019) 36 (10): 2031–2043.
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0215.1
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:150fda8fb53d117452a85ee744fdd04faefe237e6b7d1233cd8f433b5428cf2f896a410be8a5cab7c68e001909b982e9c6f00c9e4d52497d7c2347718f4ee8da
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/25066/noaa_25066_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 2.23 MB ]