MAGIC at every level: vertically resolved cloud and drizzle properties using ENCORE.
Authors
Graham Feingold — NOAA- Earth System Research Laboratory
Edwin W. Eloranta — University of Wisconsin
J.-Y. Christine Chiu — Colorado State University
Ewan James O'Connor — University of Reading
Robin J. Hogan — University of Reading
Maria Paola Cadeddu — Argonne National Laboratory
Mark David Fielding — European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Category
Warm Low Clouds and Interactions with Aerosol
Description
Improving the representation of low clouds in climate models is key to narrowing the uncertainty surrounding future climate. ARM’s longstanding cloud radar observations have proved invaluable in advancing our understanding of the microphysical processes that govern clouds, but also have a limitation in precipitating clouds. While drizzle plays a profound role in determining cloud lifetime and structure in marine boundary layer clouds, it can dominate radar returns and obscure the retrieval of cloud properties, confounding development of cloud-precipitation parameterizations. Using a new method (ENCORE), we overcome this hurdle to simultaneously retrieve cloud and drizzle vertical profiles during the recent MAGIC campaign in the northeast Pacific. A core trio of surface-based measurements from radar, lidar and shortwave radiometer enables the vertical structure of droplet size and water content of both cloud and drizzle to be characterized throughout the cloud. Using the unique MAGIC dataset, we will demonstrate how these key climate variables interact in a challenging stratocumulus to cumulus transition zone. By separating the cloud and drizzle modes we should gain further insight to processes within marine boundary layer clouds and provide new constraints for model development.
