A Climatology of Fair-Weather Cloud Statistics at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Southern Great Plains Site: Temporal and Spatial Variability
In previous work, Berg and Stull (2005) developed a new parameterization for Fair-Weather Cumuli (FWC). Preliminary testing of the new scheme used data collected during a field experiment conducted during the summer of 1996. This campaign included a few research flights conducted over three locations within the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility (ACRF) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site. A more comprehensive verification of the new scheme requires a detailed climatology of FWC. Several cloud climatologies have been completed for the ACRF SGP, but these efforts have focused on either broad categories of clouds grouped by height and season (e.g., Lazarus et al. 1999) or height and time of day (e.g., Dong et al. 2005). In these two examples, the low clouds were not separated by the type of cloud, either stratiform or cumuliform, nor were the horizontal chord length (the length of the cloud slice that passed directly overhead) or cloud aspect ratio (defined as the ratio of the cloud thickness to the cloud chord length) reported. Lane et al. (2002) presented distributions of cloud chord length, but only for one year. The work presented here addresses these shortcomings by looking explicitly at cases with FWC over five summers. Specifically, we will address the following questions: •Does the cloud fraction (CF), cloud-base height (CBH), and cloud-top height (CTH) of FWC change with the time of day or the year? •What is the distribution of FWC chord lengths? •Is there a relationship between the cloud chord length and the cloud thickness?
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 963601
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-50875; KP1205010; TRN: US200918%%346
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Proceedings of the Sixteenth Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team Meeting, March 27-31, 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Temporal Variability of Fair-Weather Cumulus Statistics at the ACRF SGP Site
Southern Great Plains (SGP) Three-Dimensional Observations of Fair-Weather Cumuli Field Campaign Report