Classification of Arctic multilayer clouds using radiosonde and radar data in Svalbard

Vassel, Maiken; Ickes, Luisa; Maturilli, Marion; Hoose, Corinna

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5111-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5111-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Arctic mixed-phase clouds as studied during the ACLOUD/PASCAL...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5111-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 7

Research article

|

16 Apr 2019

Research article |

| 16 Apr 2019

Classification of Arctic multilayer clouds using radiosonde and radar data in Svalbard

Maiken Vassel, Luisa Ickes, Marion Maturilli, and Corinna Hoose

Data sets

RS92 GRUAN Data Product Version 2 (RS92-GDP.2) M. Sommer, R. Dirksen, and F. Immler https://doi.org/10.5676/GRUAN/RS92-GDP.2

High resolution radiosonde measurements from station Ny-Ålesund (2017-04,05,06) M. Maturilli https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.879767

Short summary

Multilayer clouds are coexisting clouds at different heights. We evaluate measurements and find that Arctic multilayer clouds occur in 29 % of the investigated days at Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard. Multilayer clouds can interact by ice crystals falling from the upper cloud into the lower cloud. This is possible in 23 % of the investigated days, and in 9 % it is not possible. Weather models are still error-prone in the Arctic and we suggest that multilayer clouds should be included more in future work.