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Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds
This study examines the relationships between marine stratocumulus clouds (MSC) coupling state with the ocean surface, their precipitation rate and fractional cloud cover (CF). This was possible by developing a novel methodology for satellite retrieval of the clouds coupling state. Decks of overcast...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049894/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30034043 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078122 |
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author | Goren, Tom Rosenfeld, Daniel Sourdeval, Odran Quaas, Johannes |
author_facet | Goren, Tom Rosenfeld, Daniel Sourdeval, Odran Quaas, Johannes |
author_sort | Goren, Tom |
collection | PubMed |
description | This study examines the relationships between marine stratocumulus clouds (MSC) coupling state with the ocean surface, their precipitation rate and fractional cloud cover (CF). This was possible by developing a novel methodology for satellite retrieval of the clouds coupling state. Decks of overcast MSC were reported in previous studies to break up often as their precipitation rate increases significantly, thus reducing CF and cloud radiative effect substantially. Here we show that decks of precipitating decoupled MSC have larger CF compared to similarly precipitating coupled MSC. The difference in CF between decoupled and coupled clouds was found to increase with precipitation rate, up to nearly doubling the CF of the heaviest precipitating decoupled MSC. This suggests that decoupling is a feature related to higher cloud radiative effect in precipitating MSC. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6049894 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60498942018-07-20 Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds Goren, Tom Rosenfeld, Daniel Sourdeval, Odran Quaas, Johannes Geophys Res Lett Research Letters This study examines the relationships between marine stratocumulus clouds (MSC) coupling state with the ocean surface, their precipitation rate and fractional cloud cover (CF). This was possible by developing a novel methodology for satellite retrieval of the clouds coupling state. Decks of overcast MSC were reported in previous studies to break up often as their precipitation rate increases significantly, thus reducing CF and cloud radiative effect substantially. Here we show that decks of precipitating decoupled MSC have larger CF compared to similarly precipitating coupled MSC. The difference in CF between decoupled and coupled clouds was found to increase with precipitation rate, up to nearly doubling the CF of the heaviest precipitating decoupled MSC. This suggests that decoupling is a feature related to higher cloud radiative effect in precipitating MSC. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2018-05-17 2018-05-28 /pmc/articles/PMC6049894/ /pubmed/30034043 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078122 Text en ©2018. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
spellingShingle | Research Letters Goren, Tom Rosenfeld, Daniel Sourdeval, Odran Quaas, Johannes Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds |
title | Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds |
title_full | Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds |
title_fullStr | Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds |
title_full_unstemmed | Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds |
title_short | Satellite Observations of Precipitating Marine Stratocumulus Show Greater Cloud Fraction for Decoupled Clouds in Comparison to Coupled Clouds |
title_sort | satellite observations of precipitating marine stratocumulus show greater cloud fraction for decoupled clouds in comparison to coupled clouds |
topic | Research Letters |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6049894/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30034043 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018GL078122 |
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