Abstract
In the project of the Third Tibetan Plateau Experiment of Atmospheric Science (TIPEX III), the intensive observation of cloud and precipitation in Nagqu was conducted from 1 July to 31 August 2014. The CL31 ceilometer and a WAter vapor, Cloud and Aerosol Lidar (WACAL) were deployed and focused on studying the cloud macroscopic characteristics and vertical distribution. The statistical result of CL31 ceilometer in continuous operation mode shows that the cloud occurrence is about 81% with a majority of simple one-layer cloud. The cloud base and top height are retrieved by improved differential zero-crossing method using lidar data. The results of cloud base height (CBH) are compared with CL31 ceilometer, showing a good consistency with each other, however, in some cases, the CL31 ceilometer overestimates the CBH and is also validated by synchronous radiosonde data. The time snippet comparisons of cloud property between CL31 ceilometer and lidar imply that the cloud properties have obvious diurnal variations with “U” shape distribution. The cloud development including the time-spatial distribution features also has distinct diurnal variations based on the lidar measurement. The detection range of lidar goes beyond the maximum height of CL31 ceilometer, offering substantial observations to the analysis of cirrus cloud radiation characteristics and formation mechanism.
Highlights
Clouds play a vital role in the radiative transfer within the Earth’s atmosphere surface system and for climate system [1,2]
The 532 nm signal is separated by the dichroic long-pass filter, and the 532 nm parallel-polarized and perpendicular-polarized signals are separated by the polarizing beam splitter (PBS) and detected by photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) to retrieve the depolarization ratio
This paper summarizes the CL31 and WACAL observations and comparisons of atmospheric cloud structure
Summary
Clouds play a vital role in the radiative transfer within the Earth’s atmosphere surface system and for climate system [1,2]. Analyzed a case study of the precipitation cloud in the valley of Plateau, the value of TWP in warm season is larger than cool season’s and the vertical distribution of precipitation indicating that thePlateau topographic is the this cloud clouds in Tibetan is quiteforcing different frommain. Analyzed a case studythe of deficiency of ground-based observation is the main constraint for the accurate retrieval using satellite the precipitation cloud in the valley of Tibetan. Lidar hasLiu been quantitative research on microphysical macroscopic cloud and precipitation distribution tool of ground-based cloudand detection due tofeatures its high of temporal-spatial resolutionvertical and measurement using multiple wavelength andout lidar during. The averaged spatial distribution of acquirability different layer measured by the the two devices is analyzed after the determination of the data of clouds the WACAL. Observation further making up the constraint of CL31 undetectable condition above 7.5 km
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