The Role of Cloud Phase in Earth's Energy Budget

The effects of clouds on Earth’s energy budget depends strongly on the relative partitioning of liquid and ice phases within them. Separating the contributions of liquid, ice, and mixed-phase clouds to global cloud forcing has, however, been very challenging due to the inherent difficulty in discriminating cloud phase from satellite sensors.  Using the combination of active and passive sensors in the A-Train, our group is computing the radiative effects of the complete spectrum of global cloud regimes and determining their influence on different aspects of the climate such as the general circulation shown at the left.  Interestingly, while mixed-phase clouds comprise only 8% of total cloud occurrence, they account for nearly 20% of the global mean SW and LW cloud radiative effects.