Notes
Slide Show
Outline
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Using observations of clouds and radiation at Chilbolton UK to evaluate NWP models.

  • Anthony Illingworth and Robin Hogan
  •      University  of Reading, UK


  • Chilbolton  24h/7d vertical profiles of clouds
  • 94GHz radar and lidar – profiles 30sec/60m resolution.
  • Infer cloud properties and compare with values held in operational models for Chilbolton grid box.


  • 35GHz radar, 22/28/38GHz Radiometers,  Raman lidar.
  • 1275 clear air radar – boundary layer + refractivity
  • 3GHz polarisation radar for precipitation.
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COMPARE OBSERVATIONS AND REPRESENTATION IN MODELS.
  • Typical day
  • Is cloud fraction correct?  Pdf OK?
  • Is ice water content correct? Errors?  Pdf OK?
  • Errors when classified by weather regime?
  • Example of one month data and model
  • Cloud overlap not really maximum random?
  • Cloud inhomogeneity?
  • Supercooled layer clouds are common.


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Standard Chilbolton observations on the web
  • Radar Lidar, gauge, radiometers
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Target categorization
  • Combining radar, lidar and model allows the type of cloud (or other target) to be identified


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Cloud fraction


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Cloud fraction: one year of data
  • Too much cloud at high levels, too little at mid-levels


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Ice water content
  • Cirrus in situ measurements suggest we can obtain IWC from Z to a factor of two
    • Particles tend to be smaller at lower temperatures, so with additional use of temperature, error is reduced to -30%/+40%
    • Less accurate between -10°C and 0°C because of strong aggregation
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"Ice water content"
  • Ice water content
  •     from Z and T



  • Error in ice water content




  • Retrieval flag
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Ice water content: results
  • First ever long-term evaluation of ice water content
  • Underestimate of mean mid-level IWC in both models
    • Seems to be due to factor-of-2 error in mean cloud fraction
    • Mean in-cloud IWC appears to be reasonably good above 4 km

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IWC distributions
  • The Met Office Unified Model tends to simulate very high and very low ice water contents too infrequently
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Clasification by regime

    • Ascent at 700 hPa (>0.1 hPa/s)
    • Ascent at 400 hPa (>0.1 hPa/s)
    • Stability between 900 and 1000 hPa
  • Descent and low level stable – UM can’t make 100% cloud cover
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Eddy dissipation rate e
  • 30-s standard deviation of 1-s radar velocities, plus wind speed, gives eddy dissipation rate (Bouniol et al. 2003)
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PDF of e by cloud type
  • Mean turbulence in different clouds:
    • Stratocu: 10-3 m2s-3
    • Mixed-phase: 10-5 m2s-3
    • Cirrus: 10-6 m2s-3
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 Cloud overlap assumption in models
  • Cloud fraction and mean ice water content alone not sufficient to constrain the rad



  • iation budget










  • Assumptions generate very different cloud covers
    • Most models now use “maximum-random” overlap, but there has been very little validation
    • of this assumption
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Cloud overlap from radar: example
  • Radar can observe the actual overlap of clouds
  • We next quantify the overlap from 3 months of data
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Cloud overlap: results
  • Vertically isolated clouds are randomly overlapped
  • Overlap of vertically continuous clouds becomes rapidly more random with increasing thickness


  • ANALYTICAL EXPRESSION FOR VERTICAL DECORRELATION
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5. Importance of ice-cloud inhomogeneity
  • Non linear relation between optical depth and emissivity
  • .
  • For clouds which are inhomogeneous use of average optical depth gives wrong emissivity.
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Cirrus fallstreaks and wind shear - inhomogeneities
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Ice water content distributions
  • In the near future, models will carry variables for the variance of water content, as well as the mean
  • Derive  variance of ice water content of cirrus from radar










  • PDFs of IWC within a model gridbox can usually be fitted by a lognormal or gamma distribution
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Analytic expression for effect of shear on pdf of iwc and vertical decorrelation as a function fo grid box size.
  • Variance and decorrelation increase with gridbox size
    • Shear makes overlap of inhomogeneities more random, thereby reducing the vertical decorrelation length
    • Shear increases mixing, reducing variance of ice water content
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 Mixed-phase clouds – SUPERCOOLED LAYER CLOUDS

  • SUPERCOOLED LAYER CLOUDS ARE COMMON
  • SAME WATER CONTENT – BIG RADIATIVE EFFECT IF LIQUID DROPLETS – SMALL EFFECT IF ICE PARTICLES.


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SUPERCOOLED CLOUD EXAMPLE
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Supercooled water – model comparison
  • Use ground-based lidar to estimate occurrence of supercooled water layers over a 1-year period
  • Around 15% of mid-level ice clouds at Chilbolton contain liquid water with optical depth > 0.7
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DUAL WAVELENGTH  35 AND 94GHZ RADAR

  • LIQUID WATER CONTENT – THE 94GHZ RADAR IS ATTENUATED MORE THAN THE 35GHZ.


  • ICE PARTICLE SIZE  -
  •            Z AT 94GHz   -MIE SCATTERING
  •          Z AT 35GHZ - RAYLEIGH SCATTERING
  •        RATIO OF Z GIVES PARTICLE SIZE.
  •    ONCE SIZE IS KNOWN CAN FIND N FROM Z,
  •             AND SO MORE ACCURATE IWC.
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LIQUID WATER CONTENT PROFILE – FROM DIFFERENTIAL ATTENUATION OF Z AT 35 AND 94GHZ
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ICE  PARTICLE SIZE FROM 35 AND 94GHZ


  • Z -35GHz



  • Z–94GHz



  •  DELTA Z


  •     Do
  •  Better
  •    IWC


  • Model
  •    IWC


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25m dish:     Scan on interesting days.
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1275MHz  Clear air ‘acrobat’ radar.
  • Return is from changes in refractive index – turbulence on the scale of l/2 or 11.7cm.


  • Changes in the summer dominated by humidity.


  • Beamwidth 0.75degs – 660m at 50km range



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CONVECTIVE  ‘DONUTS’
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RHI–6 AUG-03        TOP OF THE BOUNDARY LAYER
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REFRACTIVITY in the boundary layer.
  • Ground clutter targets


  • Round trip time changes with refractive index.
  • Detect as phase change in return.


  • Refractivity, N, 1ppm change in refractive index.
  • DN = 1    gives  Df  = 3 deg/km (round trip).
  • DN = 1:   »1% change in RH (summer) or 1K
  • Technique developed by Fred Fabrey


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Refractivity change over four hours in Nov 03.
  • http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/radar/cloudnet/quicklooks/
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3GHz/10cm  BETTER RAINRATES - ZDR AND KDP IN RAIN


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Cloud products on the web
  • http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/radar/cloudnet/quicklooks/



  • Interested in data/collaboration?


  • a.j.illingworth@reading.ac.uk
  • r.j.hogan@reading.ac.uk