Tropical Anvil Cloud Top Temperatures: An Investigation Using ARM Data from the Tropical Western Pacific Sites
Hollars, S.(a), Comstock, J.M.(b), Fu, Q.(a), and Ackerman, T.P. (a), University of Washington(a) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (b)
Thirteenth Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team Meeting
The variation of cloud top heights due to climate change plays an important role in the cloud-climate feedback. This is especially true for the tropical high clouds. Tropical convective anvil clouds detrain preferentially near 200 mb and it is argued that this occurs because clear-sky radiative cooling decreases rapidly near 200 mb (Hartmann et al. 2001). It is further suggested that the temperature at the detrainment level of tropical anvil clouds will remain constant during climate change (Hartmann and Larson 2002). This hypothesis, if it is verified, would have very important implications for the potential role of tropical convective clouds in climate feedback. In this study, we will investigate the variation of tropical anvil cloud top temperatures as well as its relation to the tropical clear-sky radiative cooling rates using cloud radar and lidar data along with radiosonde observations from the ARM tropical sites. This work is starting out with a first step of deciding whether the cloud top heights are consistent with the satellite IR cloud top determinations. This information in itself would be useful to the remote sensing and tropical convective community.
Note: This is the poster abstract presented at the meeting; an extended version was not provided by the author(s).
