Abstract
Warm convective clouds play a significant role in the earth's energy and water budgets. However, they still pose a challenge in climate research as their feedback to predicted thermodynamic changes is highly uncertain and considered critical to the overall climate system's response. The focus of this study is continental, organized shallow convective clouds that, although they are spread globally and form in a variety of environments, seem to have common properties. One of these properties seems to be their preferred formation over vegetated areas, thus referred hereafter as green Cu. In this article, we present new observations of emerging universality and explore them using a method that combines fine- and coarse-resolution remote-sensing data sets. First, we use Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) true-color images to visually classify cloud fields into different classes and identify green Cu fields. We show that the level and type of organization and the properties of these fields (e.g., cloud size distribution and cloud fraction) are similar throughout the world, regardless of their location. Second, we match the corresponding MODIS level-3 cloud properties to the identified cloud classes, and based on this data sets statistics, we develop a detection method for green Cu along ten years of measurements (2003-2012). We examine the geographical distribution and seasonality of this class and show that these fields are highly abundant over many continental areas and indeed mostly in the vicinity of vegetated regions.
Highlights
C LOUDS play a key role in the earth’s energy balance and water cycle [1]
Each regions of interest (ROIs) was divided into 1◦ × 1◦ cloud fields, which were categorized into four different classes: 1) sparse; 2) organized shallow Cu; 3) transition from shallow to deep convection; and 4) deep convective
We show that a significant portion of the shallow continental convective cloud fields shares common properties, they are distributed globally and form under a variety of climatic conditions [see Fig. 1(a)–(c)]
Summary
C LOUDS play a key role in the earth’s energy balance and water cycle [1]. despite extensive research, clouds still prevent confident predictions of climate [2]–[4]. Shallow warm cumulus clouds (shallow Cu) pose one of the toughest challenges in climate research since they constitute a major source of uncertainty in tropical cloud feedback in climate models [5], [6], and their properties often cannot be obtained from space [7]. Those clouds, often called ‘fair weather cumulus’ Shallow Cu plays an important role in preconditioning the atmosphere for deep clouds development [12]. General circulation models (GCMs) suffer from errors in the location, timing, and extent of both shallow and deep convective clouds [17]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
