A Study of Diurnal Variations of Semi-Transparent Cirrus Microphysical Properties from Satellites Observations

Semi-transparent cirrus are thin cold clouds located in high altitudes. These clouds are frequently generated by tropical convections and are prevalent in tropical regions. Their radiative properties, which heavily reply on the microphysical properties, play an important role in the earth-atmosphere energy budget system primarily due to the warming effect induced by longwave trapping. Using an efficient and accurate method developed in Heidinger et al. (2015), the diurnal variations of their microphysical properties over tropical regions are investigated using both geostationary and polar-orbiting satellite observations. This study is also aiming at linking tropical convective events and the variations of semi-transparent cirrus.