the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
CALIPSO observations of the dependence of homo- and heterogeneous ice nucleation in cirrus clouds on latitude, season and surface condition
Abstract. There are two fundamental mechanisms through which cirrus clouds form; homo- and heterogeneous ice nucleation (henceforth hom and het). The relative contribution of each mechanism to ice crystal production often determines the microphysical and radiative properties of a cirrus cloud. A new satellite remote sensing method is described in this study to estimate cirrus cloud ice particle number concentration and the relative contribution of hom and het to cirrus cloud formation as a function of altitude, latitude, season and surface type (e.g. land vs. ocean). This method uses co-located observations from the Infrared Imaging Radiometer (IIR) and from the CALIOP (Cloud and Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) lidar aboard the CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) polar orbiting satellite, employing IIR channels at 10.6 μm and 12.05 μm. The method is applied here to single-layered clouds of visible optical depth between about 0.3 and 3. Two years of Version 3 data have been analyzed for the years 2008 and 2013, with each season characterized in terms of 532 nm cirrus cloud centroid altitude and temperature, the cirrus cloud ice particle number concentration, effective diameter, layer-average ice water content and visible optical depth. Using a conservative criterion for hom cirrus, on average, the sampled cirrus clouds formed through hom occur about 43 % of the time in the Arctic and 50 % of the time in the Antarctic, and during winter at mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, hom cirrus occur 37 % of the time. Elsewhere (and during other seasons in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes), this hom cirrus fraction is lower. Processes that could potentially explain these observations are discussed, as well as the potential relevancy of these results to ice nucleation studies, climate modeling and jet-stream dynamics.
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- RC1: 'Referee comment on "CALIPSO observations of the dependence of homo- and heterogeneous..." by Mitchell et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Jan 2017
- RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 Jan 2017
- AC1: 'Author response to referee comments', David Mitchell, 07 Apr 2017
- RC1: 'Referee comment on "CALIPSO observations of the dependence of homo- and heterogeneous..." by Mitchell et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Jan 2017
- RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 Jan 2017
- AC1: 'Author response to referee comments', David Mitchell, 07 Apr 2017
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Cited
7 citations as recorded by crossref.
- Ice crystal number concentration estimates from lidar–radar satellite remote sensing – Part 1: Method and evaluation O. Sourdeval et al. 10.5194/acp-18-14327-2018
- Aerosol Effects on Climate via Mixed-Phase and Ice Clouds T. Storelvmo 10.1146/annurev-earth-060115-012240
- Study on the Seasonal and Spatial Variations of Cirrus Parameters, Radiative Characteristics and Precipitation over the Indian Subcontinent J. Priya et al. 10.1007/s12524-024-01926-x
- Cirrus Cloud Properties as Seen by the CALIPSO Satellite and ECHAM-HAM Global Climate Model B. Gasparini et al. 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0608.1
- CALIPSO (IIR–CALIOP) retrievals of cirrus cloud ice-particle concentrations D. Mitchell et al. 10.5194/acp-18-17325-2018
- Ice crystal number concentration estimates from lidar–radar satellite remote sensing – Part 2: Controls on the ice crystal number concentration E. Gryspeerdt et al. 10.5194/acp-18-14351-2018
- Comparison of Modeled and Measured Ice Nucleating Particle Composition in a Cirrus Cloud R. Ullrich et al. 10.1175/JAS-D-18-0034.1