抄録
Various optical and microphysical properties of warm water-phase clouds as retrieved from the GLI and AMSR global datasets are presented. The results indicate that the retrieved effective particle radius at the cloud top was small (6 to 10μm) not only over continental and coastal ocean areas, but also over the North Pacific Ocean. The ADEOS-II GLI-AMSR coupled analysis first yielded the vertical structure of the effective particle radius over middle-to-high latitude areas, which was not covered by TRMM TMI-VIRS. The results also show that the effective particle radius at the cloud top is comparable to or larger than that in the middle to bottom layers in areas where the effective radius at the cloud top is small. These features are very similar to those at the Namibian, East Asian, Californian, and Peruvian regions, which are known as non-precipitation areas. In addition, comparisons between cloud properties retrieved from GLI and MODIS revealed that the GLI-derived effective particle radius was smaller than that derived from MODIS. The GLI-derived effective radius had a single mode in the histogram at 12μm, while the MODIS had a bi-modal structure at 10μm and 14μm as well as an inflection point at 18μm. One of the reasons for this difference in the retrieved effective radii is considered to be the difference in wavelength used for retrieving the cloud effective particle radius, where GLI and MODIS used 3.7μm and 2.1μm, respectively.
