Explaining the Difference Between the Reflectivity of Deep Convective Clouds over the Western Pacific and Tropical Continental Regions

A recent study, based on analysis of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) solar channel measurements, reports that deep convective clouds (DCCs) over the western Pacific are found to be darker than DCCs over continental tropical regions such as Africa and South America. In this study, the western Pacific domain was further divided into its land and ocean regions to deduce the general differences in DCC characteristics between convectively active tropical land and ocean regions. DCC is defined as a single-layer cloud whose thickness is greater than 15 km, and it is determined from CloudSat-measured reflectivity profiles. Corresponding MODIS-measured reflectivities at 0.645 µm were examined, along with the analysis of cloud products from Cloud Aerosol Lidar Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) measurements. Analysis of four January months of 2007-2010, demonstrates that there are distinct difference in ice water path (IWP) between the western Pacific and other three continental regions. Distinct differences in the effective radius between land and ocean were also found. The findings lead to a conclusion that smaller IWP over the western Pacific ocean region than over the tropical land regions, which should be caused by different cloud microphysics between land and ocean, is the main cause of smaller reflectivity there.