Parameterizing Ice Cloud Inhomogeneity and the Overlap of Inhomogeneities Using Cloud Radar Data

Abstract Cloud variability on scales smaller than the gridbox size of numerical forecast and climate models is believed to be important in determining the radiative effects of clouds, and increasingly attempts are being made to parameterize these fluctuations in the radiation schemes of current models. In order to calculate the radiative effects of an inhomogeneous cloud, a model needs to know not only the degree of variability within a gridbox but also the degree to which the inhomogeneities in vertically adjacent levels are overlapped. In this paper these two parameters are derived for ice clouds from an 18-month midlatitude 94-GHz cloud radar dataset and parameterized in terms of horizontal gridbox size (d), the vertical shear of the horizontal wind (s), and the vertical position in the cloud. The vertical decorrelation length Δz0 (i.e., the depth over which the correlation coefficient of either ice water content or optical extinction coefficient in separate vertical levels falls to e−1) is found to be...

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