The development of realistic cloud parameterizations for climate models requires accurate characterizations of sub-grid distributions of thermodynamic variables. To this end, a software tool was developed to characterize cloud water-content distributions in climate-model sub-grid scales.
This software characterizes distributions of cloud water content with respect to cloud phase, cloud type, precipitation occurrence, and geo-location using CloudSat radar measurements. It uses a statistical method called maximum likelihood estimation to estimate the probability density function of the cloud water content.
A crude treatment of sub-grid scale cloud processes in current climate models is widely recognized as a major limitation in predictions of global climate change. At present, typical climate models have a horizontal resolution on the order of 100 km and a variable vertical resolution between 100 m and 1 km. Since climate models cannot explicitly resolve what happens at the sub-grid scales, the physics must be parameterized as a function of the resolved motions. The fundamental problem of cloud parameterization is to characterize the distributions of cloud variables at sub-grid scales and to relate the sub-grid variations to the resolved flow. This software solves the problem by estimating the probability density function of cloud water content at the sub-grid scale using CloudSat measurements.
This work was done by Seungwon Lee of Caltech for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, contact iaoffice@jpl. nasa.gov.
This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Daniel Broderick of the California Institute of Technology at