cloud albedo


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cloud albedo

[¦klau̇d al¦bēd·ō]
(geophysics)
The fraction of the incident solar radiation reflected to space by clouds, which depends on the drop size, liquid water content, water vapor content, and thickness of the cloud, and the sun's elevation. The smaller the drops and the greater the liquid water content, the greater the cloud albedo.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
References in periodicals archive ?
Warren, 1987: Oceanic phytoplankton, atmospheric sulphur, cloud albedo and climate.
THE AEROSOLS, RADIATION AND CLOUDS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA FIELD CAMPAIGN IN NAMIBIA: Overview, Illustrative Observations, and Way Forward: New ground-based and aircraft measurements in Namibia will improve the understanding of the role of aerosols on the regional climate of the southeast Atlantic Ocean offshore southern Africa
In addition, it should be pointed out the role of cloud albedo in climatic monitoring and analysis studied by Mueller et al.
The role of the effective cloud albedo for climate monitoring and analysis.
Procedures for calculation of the albedo with OLI-Landsat 8 images: application to the Brazilian semi-arid/Procedimentos para computo do albedo com imagens OLI-Landsat 8: Aplicacao ao semiarido brasileiro
We compare fractional cloud albedo a for CTD and non-CTD cases through frequency distributions in Fig.
where [[alpha].sub.c] is fractional cloud albedo. Upon calculating [[alpha].sub.c], the TOA [CRF.sub.SW] may be estimated as
A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON COASTALLY TRAPPED DISTURBANCES USING DATA FROM THE SATELLITE ERA: Satellite observations reveal that large-scale changes in the Pacific high may yield polluted coastal marine clouds and fogs associated with coastally trapped disturbances
Such radiometers have the potential to provide an additional fundamental cloud observation that can help connect the observations to models and quantify the cloud albedo and rain susceptibilities, or how much the cloud albedo and rain vary as a function of droplet number and LWP (Terai et al.
The upwelling broadband irradiance spanning 200-3,600 nm was independently measured, and in combination with a downwelling broadband irradiance modeled on the spectral HARP irradiances, cloud albedo can be estimated.
CLOUD SYSTEM EVOLUTION IN THE TRADES (CSET): Following the Evolution of Boundary Layer Cloud Systems with the NSF-NCAR GV: The evolution of the boundary layer aerosol, cloud, precipitation, and thermodynamic structures along trajectories within the North Pacific trade winds was investigated using the NSF-NCAR Gulfstream V
Aside from the aerosol direct effect (i.e., aerosol-radiation interactions), aerosols interact with cloud particles to modulate the cloud albedo and lifetime (Twomey 1974; Albrecht 1989).
WRF-Solar: description and clear-sky assessment of an augmented NWP model for solar power prediction
9 shows 0.63-[micro]m total-sky albedo, which is the cloud albedo weighted against surface albedo for clear-sky portions of a scene.
The Pathfinder Atmospheres-Extended AVHRR climate dataset: this article describes the PATMOS-x cloud climate data record, focusing on the methods used to minimize inter-satellite artifacts
Furthermore, it was agreed that stratocumulus cloud albedo is sensitive to both natural and anthropogenic atmospheric aerosols (Twomey 1974, 1977), which are both produced in the SEP by desert dust, the ocean, copper smelters (Huneeus et al.
Ocean--cloud--atmosphere--land interactions in the Southeastern Pacific: the VOCALS program
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