Calendar Event Details
Lazaros Oreopoulos
Affiliation: NASA GSFC, Code 613
Event Date: Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Location: Building 33, G133
Time: 11:00 AM
A global-scale search for cloud responses to aerosol variations using a Cloud Regime framework
There is broad agreement that detecting cloud responses to aerosol from space (or from other vantage points for that matter) is notoriously challenging. The route we have chosen to attack the problem is to systematically analyze large volumes of Level-3 (daily gridded) data. By employing a cloud classification based on the Cloud Regime (CR) concept, namely mesoscale cloudiness with similar height-extinction co-variations, we attempt to unveil the nature of afternoon cloud (and cloud-affected quantities such as precipitation and radiative fluxes) responses to morning aerosols. Our CR definitions and occurrences are based on MODIS cloud retrievals, while aerosol optical depths (AODs) come from either MODIS or MERRA-2; precipitation and radiation data come from TRMM’s TMPA-3B42 dataset and from CERES, respectively. I will show results from two main analysis pathways, one addressing ensemble-average and one regional results. In both cases, afternoon cloud variations are examined as a function of relative morning AOD variations, with results composited by morning CR, representing different dominant classes of clouds, and therefore expected to interact with aerosol through different mechanisms. I will also present some ideas on how to untangle meteorological effects, a persistent pesky problem for anyone trying to extract aerosol-cloud interaction signals.
Posted or updated: Thursday, November 8, 2018
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