A statistical analysis for the characteristics of cloud/precipitation system from Cloudsat data

[ABSTRACT]Global distributions of cloud largely effect earth radiation budgets. The heating / cooling effect differs depending on a type of cloud due to the differences of the characteristics of radiative process. Thus, it is important to understand cloud distributions classified into some cloud types. A cloud type classification method has been developed using multiple bands in visible and infrared using geostationary satellite. However, it was hard to classify the cloud types because of limit of information from optical thickness and cloud top height. In 2006, Cloudsat satellite carrying the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) was launched, and its observation enables us to find vertical distributions of cloud globally. This study tried to characterize cloud / precipitation characteristics and classify cloud types from vertical distributions of clouds observed by Cloudsat CPR. This study applied a base of vertical-method of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (PR) 2A23 algorithm to the vertical distributions of reflectivity factor (Z) from CPR in order to detect the bright band height (BBH) and cloud types. The detected BBH exists under 250-500 m from freezing height derived from a re-analysis data. The cloud types were classified into convective with large Z, stratiform with BBH, and others. In this presentation, we will also report the characteristics of global cloud distributions with / without precipitation, with shallow or anvil, and so on.