Abstract
Abstract. A cloud particle sensor (CPS) sonde is an observing system attached with a radiosonde sensor to observe the vertical structure of cloud properties. The signals obtained from CPS sondes are related to the phase, size, and number of cloud particles. The system offers economic advantages including human resource and simple operation costs compared with aircraft measurements and land-/satellite-based remote sensing. However, the observed information should be appropriately corrected because of several uncertainties. Here we made field experiments in the Arctic region by launching approximately 40 CPS sondes between 2018 and 2020. Using these data sets, a better practical correction method was proposed to exclude unreliable data, estimate the effective cloud water droplet radius, and determine a correction factor for the total cloud particle count. We apply this method to data obtained in October 2019 over the Arctic Ocean and March 2020 at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway, to compare with a particle counter aboard a tethered balloon and liquid water content retrieved by a microwave radiometer. The estimated total particle count and liquid water content from the CPS sondes generally agree with those data. Although further development and validation of CPS sondes based on dedicated laboratory experiments would be required, the practical correction approach proposed here would offer better advantages in retrieving quantitative information on the vertical distribution of cloud microphysics under the condition of a lower number concentration.
Highlights
Clouds regulate weather and climate systems by radiation, precipitation, and the transfer of heat and moisture (Boucher et al, 2013)
The ascending speed was typically 0.5–1 m s−1, which strongly differs from the normal cloud particle sensor (CPS) sonde observations; the impact of ascending speed on particle counting is confirmed by numerical simulation, as discussed later
A collection factor of 7.5 for total particle count correction is proposed that considers the particle collection efficiency at the top of CPS housing
Summary
Clouds regulate weather and climate systems by radiation, precipitation, and the transfer of heat and moisture (Boucher et al, 2013). Cloud phases and their vertical and horizontal distribution are critical to calculating downward shortwave and longwave radiation, the representation of clouds in climate models, including the partitioning of liquid and ice in clouds, remains a challenging issue because of the poor understanding of cloud microphysical processes. A general agreement of modeled clouds using satellites in some deep cloud development processes has been reported, GCRMs still depend on cloud microphysical parameterizations, such as high thin cirrus parameters (Kodama et al, 2012) Despite these advances, the size distribution of cloud particles and vertical distribution of cloud mixing ratios remain poorly validated using observations for boundary layer clouds. The corrected cloud parameters are validated by other observation data sets
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