A Climatology of Surface Radiation, Cloud Cover, and Cloud Radiative Effects for the ARM Tropical Western Pacific

The ARM Program has been operating two tropical western Pacific equatorial sites for more than a decade on Manus, Papua New Guinea and the island nation of Nauru; a site at Darwin Australia has been in operation since late 2002. Analysis of these long term data show that the Nauru site is significantly influenced by ENSO, whereas the Manus site shows little intraseasonal or interannual variability. The Darwin site experiences large variability due to its monsoon climate. Using data from 1999 through 2010 inclusive we will present details of the surface radiative energy budget, cloud amounts, and cloud radiative effects in the context of ENSO, the Darwin monsoon, and by cloud type using a simple cloud classification system from cloud radar/lidar observations.