Cloud microphysical and radiative properties for parameterization and satellite monitoring of the indirect effect of aerosol on climate

Abstract

The spatial variability of the microphysical fields in stratocumulus clouds is documented in this paper with statistics of droplet number concentration, droplet mean volume radius, and liquid water content for eight cases of the second Aerosol Characterization Experiment. Statistics are calculated in five sublayers, from cloud base to cloud top, and they are utilized for deriving estimates of cloud optical thickness and liquid water path, by assuming either random or maximum overlap. The resulting in situ frequency distributions of optical thickness and liquid water path are validated against distributions of these two parameters retrieved from independent remote sensing measurements of cloud radiances. They are also used for testing parameterizations of optical thickness based on liquid water path and either the droplet effective radius or the cloud droplet number concentration. This unique data set of extensive, concomitant, and independent measurements of cloud microphysical and radiative properties is finally used for assessing the detectability of the aerosol indirect effect through examination of the correlation between cloud optical thickness and droplet effective radius. If only cases of comparable values of geometrical thickness are considered, the correlation between optical thickness and effective radius is negative, as anticipated by Twomey [1977]. However, if the most polluted cases are also accounted for, the trend suggests a positive correlation. In fact, the most polluted cloud systems sampled during ACE‐2 were slightly drier, hence thinner, than the marine and intermediate cases, hence producing a positive correlation between optical thickness and droplet effective radius. This study demonstrates that the monitoring of the aerosol indirect effect with satellite observations requires an independent retrieval of the liquid water path together with the cloud optical thickness and droplet effective radius.