Exploring the First Aerosol Indirect Effect over Southeast Asia Using a 10-Year Collocated Modis, Caliop, and Model Dataset

Abstract

Satellite observations and model simulations cannot, by themselves, give full insight into the complex relationships between aerosols and clouds. This is especially true over Southeast Asia, an area that is particularly sensitive to changes in precipitation yet poses some of the world's largest observability and predictability challenges. We present a new collocated dataset, the Curtain Cloud-Aerosol Regional ATrain dataset, or CCARA. CCARA includes collocated satellite observations from Aqua's Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) with the Navy Aerosol Analysis and Prediction System (NAAPS). The CCARA dataset is designed with the capability to investigate aerosol-cloud relationships in regions with limited aerosol retrievals due to high cloud amounts by leveraging the NAAPS model reanalysis of aerosol concentration in these regions. This combined aerosol and cloud dataset provides coincident and vertically resolved cloud and aerosol observations for 2006-2016. Using the model reanalysis aerosol fields from the NAAPS and coincident cloud liquid effective radius retrievals from MODIS (cirrus contamination using CALIOP), we investigate the first aerosol indirect effect in Southeast Asia. We find that, as expected, aerosol loading anti-correlates with cloud effective radius, with maximum sensitivity in cumulous mediocris clouds with heights in the 3-4.5 km level. The highest susceptibilities in droplet effective radius to modeled perturbations in particle concentrations were found in the more remote and pristine regions of the western Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. Conversely, there was much less variability in cloud droplet size near emission sources over both land and water.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 04, 2018
Accession Number
AD1103238

Entities

People

  • Alexa D. Ross
  • Derek J. Posselt
  • F. J. Turk
  • Gregory Quinn
  • Jeffrey S. Reid
  • Peng Xian
  • Robert E. Holz

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Asia
  • Climate
  • Climate Change
  • Clouds
  • Continents
  • Data Sets
  • Environment
  • Geographic Regions
  • Geography
  • Grids
  • Indian Ocean
  • Interdisciplinary Science
  • Meteorology
  • Pacific Ocean
  • Southeast Asia

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Aerosol Science/Aerosol Physics
  • Atmospheric Science/Meteorology

Technology Areas

  • Space