The Distribution of Cloud Horizontal Sizes

Abstract

Abstract Cloud horizontal size distributions from near-global satellite data, from aircraft, and from a global high-resolution numerical weather prediction model, are presented for the scale range 0.1–8000 km and are shown to be well-represented using a single power-law relationship with an exponent of β = 1.66 ±0.04 from 0.1 to 1500 km or more. At scales longer than 1500 km, there is a statistically significant scale break with fewer very large clouds than expected from the power law. The size distribution is integrated to determine the contribution to cloud cover and visible reflectance from clouds larger than a given size. Globally, clouds with a horizontal dimension of 200 km or more constitute approximately 50% of the cloud cover and 60% of the reflectance, and this result is not sensitive to the minimum size threshold assumed in the integral assuming that the power law can be extrapolated below 100-m scale. The result is also not sensitive to whether the size distribution is determined using cloud segment length or cloud area. This emphasizes the great role played by large cloud sheets in determining the earth’s albedo. On the other hand, some 15% of global cloud cover comes from clouds smaller than 10 km, thus emphasizing the broad range of cloud sizes that contribute significantly to the earth’s radiation budget. Both of these results stem from the fact that β is slightly less than 2. The data are further divided and geographical and seasonal variations in the cloud size L50 for which clouds larger than L50 constitute 50% of the cloud cover are determined. The largest clouds (L50 > 300 km) are found over the midlatitude oceans, particularly in summer, and over the tropical convective regions of the west Pacific and Indian Oceans and the monsoon-influenced landmasses. The smallest clouds (L50 < 100 km) are found over the trade wind regions of the tropics/subtropics and over arid land areas. Small variations in the exponent β contribute significantly to the variations in L50. Finally, it is shown that a bounded cascade model can faithfully simulate the observed cloud size distributions and use this to examine the effects of limiting sensor resolution (pixel size) and domain size (number of pixels across image). Sensor resolution is not found to strongly impact the cloud size distribution provided the ratio of the domain to pixel size remains greater than ~1000. Thus, previous studies with small domain–pixel size ratios may provide biased information about the true cloud size distribution, and should be interpreted with caution.