Validation of cloud parametrization
| Title | Validation of cloud parametrization
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Report
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| Date Published |
12/2009
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| Series/Collection |
WP-2100 Report for ESA contract 1-5576/07/NL/CB: Project QuARL - Quantitative Assessment of the Operational Value of Space-Borne Radar and Lidar Measurements of Cloud and Aerosol Profiles
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| Document Number |
2009:WP-2100 contract 1-5576/07/NL/CB
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| Author | |
| Event Series/Collection |
ESA Contract Report
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| Abstract | The current space-borne radar and lidar onboard the CloudSat and CALIPSO satellite missions provide an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate the representation of clouds and precipitation in global atmospheric models and demonstrate the utility of such observations for improvement of NWP and climate models. At ECMWF, the IFS global forecast model is used across a range of resolutions for operational medium-range Numerical Weather Prediction, seasonal forecasting and re-analysis, and appropriate parametrizations are vital for representing the hydrological, radiative and dynamical impacts of cloud and precipitation. This report describes a first evaluation of the ECMWF IFS model with observations from the CloudSat radar and CALIPSO lidar. Different aspects of the model cloud and precipitation fields are investigated with a focus on regional and regime-based statistical comparisons to assess the model and potential improvements to the representation of physical processes. Many of the problems of model-observation comparison due to the different spatial scales in the observations and the model, differences between the parameters observed and prognosed by the model, and uncertainties in the observations are explored, with relevance to both the current active radar/lidar satellite instruments and future missions such as EarthCARE. |
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