PNNL

Abstract

Ground-based lidar and CALIOP datasets gathered over four mid-latitude sites, two US and two French sites, are used to evaluate the consistency of cloud macrophysical and optical property climatologies that can be derived by such datasets. The consistency in average cloud height (both base and top height) between the CALIOP and ground datasets ranges from -0.4km to +0.5km. The cloud geometrical thickness distributions vary significantly between the different datasets, due in part to the original vertical resolutions of the lidar profiles. Average cloud geometrical thicknesses vary from 1.2 to 1.9km, i.e. by more than 50%. Cloud optical thickness distributions in subvisible, semi-transparent and moderate intervals differ by more than 50% between ground and space-based datasets. The cirrus clouds with 2 optical thickness below 0.1 (not included in historical cloud climatologies) represent 30-50% of the non-opaque cirrus class. The differences in average cloud base altitude between ground and CALIOP datasets of 0.0-0.1 km, 0.0-0.2 km and 0.0-0.2 km can be attributed to irregular sampling of seasonal variations in the ground-based data, to day-night differences in detection capabilities by CALIOP, and to the restriction to situations without low-level clouds in ground-based data, respectively. The cloud geometrical thicknesses are not affected by irregular sampling of seasonal variations in the ground-based data, while up to 0.0-0.2 km and 0.1-0.3 km differences can be attributed to day-night differences in detection capabilities by CALIOP, and to the restriction to situations without lowlevel clouds in ground-based data, respectively.