6.4 APPLICATION OF A STOCHASTIC CLOUD MODEL TO MIXED PHASE ARCTIC CLOUDS: AN OVERVIEW

• Main Authors: Joseph F. Brodie, Dana E. Veron
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.567.4646

Recent research has indicated that mixed phase clouds make up about one-third of all Arctic clouds (Pinto 1998; Intrieri et al. 2002[a]; McFarquhar and Cober 2004). Mixed phase clouds are typically composed of distinct regions of supercooled water and regions that are mostly ice. Additionally, the microphysical composition of clouds is one of the major influences on radiative characteristics (Shupe and Intrieri 2004). Despite the uniqueness and prevalence of mixed phase clouds at high latitudes, most climate models are not capable of handling clouds of mixed phase, and must assume that the clouds are either all liquid or all ice. However, incorporating a stochastic algorithm such as that explored by