4.7 Article

Analyzing the Thermodynamic Phase Partitioning of Mixed Phase Clouds Over the Southern Ocean Using Passive Satellite Observations

Journal

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 48, Issue 7, Pages -

Publisher

AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021GL093225

Keywords

mixed‐ phase clouds; SEVIRI; Southern Ocean; space‐ based sensors; thermodynamic phase partitioning

Funding

  1. state of Baden Wurttemberg through bwHPC
  2. European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union [714062]
  3. European Research Council (ERC) [714062] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)

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The thermodynamic phase transition of clouds is not well understood, leading to misrepresentations of ice and liquid partitioning in mixed phase clouds in numerical models. Research found that the density of ice pixel clusters increases with cloud ice fraction, particularly efficient for clouds with high perimeter fractal dimension.
The thermodynamic phase transition of clouds is still not well understood, therefore, the partitioning of ice and liquid in mixed phase clouds is often misrepresented in numerical models. We use 12 years of cloud observations from the geostationary Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager over the Southern Ocean to detect clouds which contain both liquid and ice pixels at their tops and we retrieve microphysical and radiative properties in each cloud object. The results show that large cloud droplet effective radius coincides with high ice fraction and high ice optical thickness for cloud top temperatures higher than -8 degrees C. We also found that the density of ice pixel clusters increases with the cloud ice fraction, for ice fraction lower than 0.5, suggesting a multiplication of ice pockets in line with previous studies, particularly efficient for clouds with high perimeter fractal dimension.

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