Permalink :  http://hdl.handle.net/2115/55064

This study conducted simulations of stratocumulus using a fully compressible Large Eddy Simulation (LES) model. Using the three-dimensional LES,we investigated the temporal evolution of two types of diagram:(1) the Contoured Frequency Optical Depth Diagram (CFODD), and (2) the correlation pattern between the clouddroplet effective radius and the cloud optical thickness (RE-COT pattern). Our results suggest that part of the cloud lifecycle (i.e., the transition from the non-drizzle to drizzle stage) can be expressed well by the CFODD of individual clouds. However, the cloud lifecycle on the RE-COT pattern was obscure. This advantage of CFODD over the RE-COT pattern arises because the CFODD uses vertical information in the inner cloud, whereas the effective radius of the RE-COT diagram represents properties near the cloud top. Our results emphasize that future satellite observations should retrieve vertical information. This is an example of the contribution of computational science to cloud and aerosol science, and indicates that numerical simulations can be used to augment satellite observations.

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