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Comparison of mixed-phase clouds over the Arctic and the Tibetan Plateau: seasonality and vertical structure of cloud radiative effects

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Abstract

Abundant mixed-phase clouds exist over the Arctic and the Tibetan Plateau. Salient differences in their seasonal cycle and in their vertical structure and cloud radiative effects (CREs, which includes shortwave CRE, longwave CRE and net CRE) imply different influences on the climate system. The maximum incidence of mixed-phase clouds appears during the late spring and early winter over the Arctic Ocean, but it appears during the summer over the Tibetan Plateau. The surface mixed-phase-cloud-induced CRE exerts a strong warming effect over the Arctic during the cold season (from September to May), in contrast to the strong cooling effect over the Tibetan Plateau during the summer. The existence of temperature inversion over the Arctic Ocean confines the mixed-phase clouds and associated cloud hydrometeors and vertical radiative heating profile at the near surface, while over the Tibetan Plateau there is no such a temperature inversion, and hence the cloud-induced atmospheric heating profile exhibits both larger vertical contrast and more seasonal variation over the Tibetan Plateau.

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Data availability

All the satellite data used in this study were obtained from http://www.cloudsat.cira.colostate.edu/order-data (last access: 29 December 2018).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. XDA19070404). It was also supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 41875130). Two anonymous reviewers are appreciated for their constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yafei Yan, Xiaolin Liu & Yimin Liu

  2. School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences (SEGS), Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China

    Yafei Yan

  3. College of Earth Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xiaolin Liu & Yimin Liu

  4. School of Atmospheric Sciences, and Guangdong Province Key Laboratory for Climate Change and Natural Disaster Studies, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, 519082, China

    Jianhua Lu

  5. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, 519082, China

    Jianhua Lu

Authors
  1. Yafei Yan
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  2. Xiaolin Liu
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  3. Yimin Liu
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Contributions

JL: initiated the idea of comparison between clouds over the TP and that over the Arctic; YY and XL: performed the diagnostics of CloudSat/CALIPSO data; YY: performed the calculation of radiative fluxes based on the RRTM; JL and YY: wrote the manuscript; JL and YL: supervised the diagnostics.

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Correspondence to Jianhua Lu.

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Yan, Y., Liu, X., Liu, Y. et al. Comparison of mixed-phase clouds over the Arctic and the Tibetan Plateau: seasonality and vertical structure of cloud radiative effects. Clim Dyn 54, 4811–4822 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05257-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05257-8

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