Distinct dynamical properties of low clouds
Submitter:
Witte, Mikael — Naval Postgraduate School
Jeong, Jong-Hoon — University of California, Los Angeles
Area of research:
Cloud Processes
Journal Reference:
Science
Marine low clouds over the ocean are critical to the climate system. These clouds have air motion in them at spatial scales smaller than the grid size of current global models. What statistical features of low-cloud dynamics using long-term remote-sensing observation?
Impact
Our findings suggest that care must be taken when interpreting island-based observations as representative of a generic marine dynamic environment.
Summary
We identified the two marine boundary-layer clouds (e.g., stratocumulus and shallow cumulus clouds). These two clouds have distinct dynamical characteristics for the first four moments of the vertical velocity (w) distributions. Also, we found a strong dependence of subcloud mean w depending on near-surface horizontal wind direction.