11th Conference on Satellite Meteorology and Oceanography

Monday, 15 October 2001
Cloud climate investigations in Scandinavia during the last decade using high-resolution NOAA AVHRR data
Karl-Göran Karlsson, SMHI, Norrköping, Sweden; and A. Dybbroe
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Cloud climate investigations in Scandinavia during the last decade using high-resolution NOAA AVHRR data

Karl-Göran Karlsson and Adam Dybbroe

Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI)

SE-601 76 Norrköping, Sweden

 

Abstract

A ten-year cloud climatology with a horizontal resolution of four km has been compiled over the Scandinavian region based on results from near real-time cloud classifications of the SMHI SCANDIA model (Karlsson, 1996, 1997). The following specific features of the cloud climate (in addition to ten-year monthly means of total cloud cover) have been studied:

  1. Frequency and geographic distribution of the three cloud groups Low-, Medium- and High-level clouds.
  2. Frequency and distribution of water and ice clouds
  3. Frequency distribution of deep convective clouds
  4. Typical cloud patterns in various weather regimes (e.g., North Atlantic Oscillation phases)

The quality of the satellite-based cloud information was examined by comparing with corresponding surface-observations given by SYNOP-based cloud climatologies for the same period. Comparions have also been made with other available cloud climate datasets (e.g., the SYNOP-based CRU dataset and the cloud climatologies from the ISCCP C2 and D2 series ).

Results from a recently improved cloud classification scheme (Dybbroe et al., 2000) will also be shown for a larger European region covering a large part of northern Europe (i.e., the Baltic Sea drainage area). These results are used within the BALTEX project, a project in the GEWEX programme for studies of the water and energy cycle of the Baltic Sea.

References

Dybbroe, A., Thoss, A. and Karlsson, K.-G., 2000: The AVHRR & AMSU products of the Nowcasting SAF, Proc. 2000 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Data Users’ Conference, Bologna, Italy, 29 May–2 June 2000, EUMETSAT, EUM P 29,729-736.

Karlsson, K.-G., 1996: Cloud classifications with the SCANDIA model, SMHI Reports on Meteorology and Climatology, No. 67, 36 pp.

Karlsson, K.-G., 1997: Cloud climate investigations in the Nordic region using NOAA AVHRR data, Theor. Appl. Climatol., 57, 181-195.

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