Measurements of cloud radiative effect across the Southern Ocean (43° S–79° S, 63° E–158° W)

The surface radiation environment over the Southern Ocean within the region bound by 42.8° S to 78.7° S and 62.6° E to 157.7° W is summarised for three austral summers. This is done using ship-based measurements with the combination of downwelling radiation sensors and a cloud imager. We focus on ch...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmosphere
Main Authors: Wang, H, Klekociuk, AR, French, WJR, Alexander, SP, Warner, TA
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPIAG 2020
Subjects:
clouds
cloud radiative effect
Southern Ocean
Ross Sea
shortwave radiation
longwave radiation
Austral
Sea ice
Online Access:https://eprints.utas.edu.au/36086/
https://eprints.utas.edu.au/36086/1/142726%20-%20Measurements%20of%20cloud%20radiative%20effect%20across%20the%20Southern%20Ocean.pdf
Description
Summary:The surface radiation environment over the Southern Ocean within the region bound by 42.8° S to 78.7° S and 62.6° E to 157.7° W is summarised for three austral summers. This is done using ship-based measurements with the combination of downwelling radiation sensors and a cloud imager. We focus on characterising the cloud radiative effect (CRE) under a variety of conditions, comparing observations in the open ocean with those in the sea ice zone. For comparison with our observed data, we obtained surface data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts fifth reanalysis (ERA5). We found that the daily average cloud fraction was slightly lower in ERA5 compared with the observations (0.71 and 0.75, respectively). ERA5 also showed positive biases in the shortwave radiation effect and a negative bias in the longwave radiation effect. The observed mean surface CRE of −164 ± 100 Wm−2 was more negative than the mean surface CRE for ERA5 of −101 W m−2.

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