Aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI) viewed by satellite and ground-based remote sensing

Various aerosol and cloud microphysical properties have been compared and examined for several years using ground-based remote sensing data from Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM), which showed that the clouds with strong above-cloud inversions are more immune to variations in the meteorological environment and the associated aerosol-cloud interactions appear to be more dominant in nearly adiabatic clouds by comparing different environmental conditions. Meanwhile, MODIS (Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and NCEP/NCAR (National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research) reanalysis data from 2001 to 2008 have been analysed to understand long-term aerosol and cloud optical properties, and their relationships in East Asia. Specifically only relationships between aerosol optical depth (AOD) and cloud fraction (CF) for the low-level liquid-phase clouds exhibit the overall positive correlation, being consistent with cloud lifetime effect. The results imply t...