Exploring the Influences of Drizzle on Warm Cloud Organization using ARM Remote Sensing Observations over the Eastern North Atlantic

Drizzle plays an essential role in modulating the evolution of marine warm clouds through its inextricable interactions with aerosol, clouds, radiation, boundary-layer structure, and dynamical factors. These interactions collectively contribute to the warm cloud organization and impact the Earth’s radiation balance. While drizzle is crucial for regulating the cloud structure and energy balance, our understanding of drizzle-related processes remains limited as they incorporate interconnected phenomena across various scales, which requires high-temporal and detailed observations to investigate the complete mechanisms. The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility at the Eastern North Atlantic site provides rich remote sensing observations for exploring the cloud-precipitation processes at microphysical scales and how they interact with boundary-layer structure, radiation, and large-scale environments. In this work, we examine the drizzle structures and their co-variability with clouds and mesoscale cloud morphology using an innovative joint cloud and drizzle retrieval based on the ARM measurements of cloud radar, lidar, and shortwave radiometer. Furthermore, with the aid of ground-based scanning radar and geostationary satellite observations, plausible mechanisms for the drizzle to impact the organization of marine warm clouds will be discussed from Eulerian and Lagrangian perspectives.