Hemispheric contrasts in ice formation in stratiform mixed-phase clouds: disentangling the role of aerosol and dynamics with ground-based remote sensing
Radenz, Martin
Leibniz Association
Buehl, Johannes
Leibniz Association
Seifert, Patric
Leibniz Association
Baars, Holger
Leibniz Association
Engelmann, Ronny
Leibniz Association
Mamouri, Rodanthi-Elisabeth
Cyprus Univ Technol Technol
Ansmann, Albert
Leibniz Association
Journal
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
ISSN
1680-7316
1680-7324
Open Access
gold
Volume
21
Start page
17969
End page
17994
Multi-year ground-based remote-sensing datasets were acquired with the Leipzig Aerosol and Cloud Remote Observations System (LACROS) at three sites. A highly polluted central European site (Leipzig, Germany), a polluted and strongly dust-influenced eastern Mediterranean site (Limassol, Cyprus), and a clean marine site in the southern mid-latitudes (Punta Arenas, Chile) are used to contrast ice formation in shallow stratiform liquid clouds. These unique, long-term datasets in key regions of aerosol-cloud interaction provide a deeper insight into cloud microphysics. The influence of temperature, aerosol load, boundary layer coupling, and gravity wave motion on ice formation is investigated. With respect to previous studies of regional contrasts in the properties of mixed-phase clouds, our study contributes the following new aspects: (1) sampling aerosol optical parameters as a function of temperature, the average backscatter coefficient at supercooled conditions is within a factor of 3 at all three sites. (2) Ice formation was found to be more frequent for cloud layers with cloud top temperatures above -15 degrees C than indicated by prior lidar-only studies at all sites. A virtual lidar detection threshold of ice water content (IWC) needs to be considered in order to bring radar-lidar-based studies in agreement with lidar-only studies. (3) At similar temperatures, cloud layers which are coupled to the aerosol-laden boundary layer show more intense ice formation than decoupled clouds. (4) Liquid layers formed by gravity waves were found to bias the phase occurrence statistics below -15 degrees C. By applying a novel gravity wave detection approach using vertical velocity observations within the liquid-dominated cloud top, wave clouds can be classified and excluded from the statistics. After considering boundary layer and gravity wave influences, Punta Arenas shows lower fractions of ice-containing clouds by 0.1 to 0.4 absolute difference at temperatures between -24 and -8 degrees C. These differences are potentially caused by the contrast in the ice-nucleating particle (INP) reservoir between the different sites.
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