HR: 0800h
AN: A41B-0426    [Abstracts]
TI: Comparison of Cloud Amount between CALIPSO and General Circulation Models
AU: * Luo, Y
EM: yali@cams.cma.gov.cn
AF: State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, 46 Zhong-Guan-Cun South Avenue, Beijing, BJ 100081, China
AU: Zhang, S
EM: zhangsj@cams.cma.gov.cn
AF: State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, 46 Zhong-Guan-Cun South Avenue, Beijing, BJ 100081, China
AU: Yongjun, Z
EM: yongjunzheng@163.com
AF: LASG, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 9804, Beijing, BJ 100029, China
AU: Hu, Y
EM: yongxiang.hu-1@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Langley Research Center, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, United States
AB: General Circulation Models (GCMs) are the primary tools for climate change prediction. The greatest uncertainties in GCM simulations and future projections of climate probably arise from clouds and their interactions with radiation. CALIPSO (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) was launched into a sun-synchronous orbit on April 28, 2006, where it joined the A-Train constellation of four other Earth-orbiting satellites: Aqua, Aura, CloudSat and Parasol. Fielding the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) and combined with the Cloud Profiling Radar aboard CloudSat, CALIPSO is able to make a global survey of the vertical structure of clouds and aerosols and their physical properties and, thus, provides a unique opportunity for GCM cloud evaluation. In the present study, the CALIPSO Level 2 Cloud Layer Product for an entire year period (June 2006 to May 2007) is used to analyze global distribution of cloud amount with a focus on the seasonal variations of cloud distribution. The observations are compared to results from global simulations performed using a few GCMs. The GCMs are used at the National Climate Center of China, the National Meteorology Center of China, and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, respectively, for operational prediction of weather or climate and climate study. Possible causes for the discrepancies in cloud distribution between the GCMs and CALIPSO are discussed and related to uncertainties associated with the GCMs' physics. Comparisons of atmospheric temperature and moisture and grid-scale vertical velocity are also made among the GCMs in order to explain the differences and similarities in their simulated cloud amounts.
DE: 3309 Climatology (1616, 1620, 3305, 4215, 8408)
DE: 3311 Clouds and aerosols
DE: 3337 Global climate models (1626, 4928)
DE: 3360 Remote sensing
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting