Variability of cloud optical depth and cloud droplet effective radius in layer clouds : satellite based analysis ...
Measurements made by the AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) on board of five NOAA polar orbiting satellites were used to retrieve cloud optical depth (τ) and cloud droplet effective radius (r[sub eff]) for marine boundary layer clouds over the Pacific Ocean west of California and over...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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University of British Columbia
2009
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0088758 https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0088758 |
| Summary: | Measurements made by the AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) on board of five NOAA polar orbiting satellites were used to retrieve cloud optical depth (τ) and cloud droplet effective radius (r[sub eff]) for marine boundary layer clouds over the Pacific Ocean west of California and over the Southern Ocean near Tasmania. Retrievals were obtained for 21 days of data acquired between 1987 and 1995 from which over 300 subscenes ~ 256 km x 256 km in size were extracted. On this spatial scale cloud fields were found to have mean τ between 8 and 32 and mean r[sub eff] between 6 and 17 μm. The frequency distribution of τ is well approximated by a two parameter gamma distribution. The gamma distribution also provides a good fit to the observed r[sub eff] distribution if the distribution is symmetric or positively skewed but fails for negatively skewed or bi-modal distributions of r[sub eff] which were also observed. The retrievals show a relationship between τ and r[sub eff] which is consistent with a ... |
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