Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget

Quantifying the role of clouds in the earth's radiation budget is essential for improving our understanding of the drivers and feedback mechanisms of climate change. This holds in particular for the Arctic, the region currently undergoing the most rapid changes. This region, however, also poses...

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Published in:Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Main Authors: Griesche, Hannes Jascha, Barrientos-Velasco, Carola, Deneke, Hartwig, Hünerbein, Anja, Seifert, Patric, Macke, Andreas
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-597-2024
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/24/597/2024/
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spelling ftcopernicus:oai:publications.copernicus.org:acp109903 2024-09-15T18:02:16+00:00 Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget Griesche, Hannes Jascha Barrientos-Velasco, Carola Deneke, Hartwig Hünerbein, Anja Seifert, Patric Macke, Andreas 2024-01-16 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-597-2024 https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/24/597/2024/ eng eng doi:10.5194/acp-24-597-2024 https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/24/597/2024/ eISSN: 1680-7324 Text 2024 ftcopernicus https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-597-2024 2024-08-28T05:24:15Z Quantifying the role of clouds in the earth's radiation budget is essential for improving our understanding of the drivers and feedback mechanisms of climate change. This holds in particular for the Arctic, the region currently undergoing the most rapid changes. This region, however, also poses significant challenges to remote-sensing retrievals of clouds and radiative fluxes, introducing large uncertainties in current climate data records. In particular, low-level stratiform clouds are common in the Arctic but are, due to their low altitude, challenging to observe and characterize with remote-sensing techniques. The availability of reliable ground-based observations as reference is thus of high importance. In the present study, radiative transfer simulations using state-of-the-art ground-based remote sensing of clouds are contrasted with surface radiative flux measurements to assess their ability to constrain the cloud radiative effect. Cloud radar, lidar, and microwave radiometer observations from the PS106 cruise in the Arctic marginal sea ice zone in summer 2017 were used to derive cloud micro- and macrophysical properties by means of the instrument synergy approach of Cloudnet. Closure of surface radiative fluxes can only be achieved by a realistic representation of the low-level liquid-containing clouds in the radiative transfer simulations. The original, most likely erroneous, representation of these low-level clouds in the radiative transfer simulations led to errors in the cloud radiative effect of 54 W m −2 . In total, the proposed method could be applied to 11 % of the observations. For the data, where the proposed method was utilized, the average relative error decreased from 109 % to 37 % for the simulated solar and from 18 % to 2.5 % for the simulated terrestrial downward radiative fluxes at the surface. The present study highlights the importance of jointly improving retrievals for low-level liquid-containing clouds which are frequently encountered in the high Arctic, together with observational ... Text Climate change Sea ice Copernicus Publications: E-Journals Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 24 1 597 612
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collection Copernicus Publications: E-Journals
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language English
description Quantifying the role of clouds in the earth's radiation budget is essential for improving our understanding of the drivers and feedback mechanisms of climate change. This holds in particular for the Arctic, the region currently undergoing the most rapid changes. This region, however, also poses significant challenges to remote-sensing retrievals of clouds and radiative fluxes, introducing large uncertainties in current climate data records. In particular, low-level stratiform clouds are common in the Arctic but are, due to their low altitude, challenging to observe and characterize with remote-sensing techniques. The availability of reliable ground-based observations as reference is thus of high importance. In the present study, radiative transfer simulations using state-of-the-art ground-based remote sensing of clouds are contrasted with surface radiative flux measurements to assess their ability to constrain the cloud radiative effect. Cloud radar, lidar, and microwave radiometer observations from the PS106 cruise in the Arctic marginal sea ice zone in summer 2017 were used to derive cloud micro- and macrophysical properties by means of the instrument synergy approach of Cloudnet. Closure of surface radiative fluxes can only be achieved by a realistic representation of the low-level liquid-containing clouds in the radiative transfer simulations. The original, most likely erroneous, representation of these low-level clouds in the radiative transfer simulations led to errors in the cloud radiative effect of 54 W m −2 . In total, the proposed method could be applied to 11 % of the observations. For the data, where the proposed method was utilized, the average relative error decreased from 109 % to 37 % for the simulated solar and from 18 % to 2.5 % for the simulated terrestrial downward radiative fluxes at the surface. The present study highlights the importance of jointly improving retrievals for low-level liquid-containing clouds which are frequently encountered in the high Arctic, together with observational ...
format Text
author Griesche, Hannes Jascha
Barrientos-Velasco, Carola
Deneke, Hartwig
Hünerbein, Anja
Seifert, Patric
Macke, Andreas
spellingShingle Griesche, Hannes Jascha
Barrientos-Velasco, Carola
Deneke, Hartwig
Hünerbein, Anja
Seifert, Patric
Macke, Andreas
Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget
author_facet Griesche, Hannes Jascha
Barrientos-Velasco, Carola
Deneke, Hartwig
Hünerbein, Anja
Seifert, Patric
Macke, Andreas
author_sort Griesche, Hannes Jascha
title Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget
title_short Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget
title_full Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget
title_fullStr Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget
title_full_unstemmed Low-level Arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget
title_sort low-level arctic clouds: a blind zone in our knowledge of the radiation budget
publishDate 2024
url https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-597-2024
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/24/597/2024/
genre Climate change
Sea ice
genre_facet Climate change
Sea ice
op_source eISSN: 1680-7324
op_relation doi:10.5194/acp-24-597-2024
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/24/597/2024/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-597-2024
container_title Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
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