Contrasting characteristics of open- and closed-cellular stratocumulus cloud in the eastern North Atlantic

Jensen, Michael P.; Ghate, Virendra P.; Wang, Dié; Apoznanski, Diana K.; Bartholomew, Mary J.; Giangrande, Scott E.; Johnson, Karen L.; Thieman, Mandana M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-14557-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 19

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-14557-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Marine aerosols, trace gases, and clouds over the North Atlantic...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-14557-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 19

Research article

|

01 Oct 2021

Research article |

| 01 Oct 2021

Contrasting characteristics of open- and closed-cellular stratocumulus cloud in the eastern North Atlantic

Michael P. Jensen, Virendra P. Ghate, Dié Wang, Diana K. Apoznanski, Mary J. Bartholomew, Scott E. Giangrande, Karen L. Johnson, and Mandana M. Thieman

Data sets

Balloon-borne Sounding System (SONDEWNPN) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility https://doi.org/10.5439/1021460

MWR Retrievals with MWRRET Version 2 (MWRRET2TURN) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility https://doi.org/10.5439/1393437

Video Disdrometer (VDISDROPS) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility https://doi.org/10.5439/1025316

Active Remote Sensing of Clouds (ARSCL) product using Ka-band ARM Zenith Radars Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility https://doi.org/10.5439/1393437

SatCORPS METEOSAT10-derived Cloud and Radiative Property Dataset: ENA version 4.2.2 NASA https://satcorps.larc.nasa.gov/prod/exp/amf_azores_reprocessed/visst-pixel-netcdf

CER_GEO_Ed4_MET10 pixel-level dataset, version1.0 NASA https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?q5CER_GEO_Ed4_MET10

Short summary

This work compares the large-scale meteorology, cloud, aerosol, precipitation, and thermodynamics of closed- and open-cell cloud organizations using long-term observations from the astern North Atlantic. Open-cell cases are associated with cold-air outbreaks and occur in deeper boundary layers, with stronger winds and higher rain rates compared to closed-cell cases. These results offer important benchmarks for model representation of boundary layer clouds in this climatically important region.