SURFACE-BASED MEASUREMENTS AND SATELLITE RETRIEVALS OF BROKEN CLOUD PROPERTIES IN THE EQUATORIAL PACIFIC

Ship-based measurements of marine clouds and radiation in the equatorial Pacific are used to address a critical question: What is the relationship of integrated cloud liquid to cloud albedo and solar flux at the Earth's surface in the broken cloud regime? These measurements, taken during a 21-day on-site period of the Tropical Instability Wave Experiment (TIWE), constitute the first comprehensive database for examining subgrid-scale parameterizations of cloud and radiation interactions for nonhomogeneous cloud regimes. The high-resolution field experiment data are used in combination with satellite-based records to investigate the relationship between small-scale (temporal and spatial) quantities and the large-scale parameterizations of the effects. In the 21-day ship-based record the average cloud fraction was 0.26 and the average cloud optical depth was about 2. The temporally averaged ship-based estimate of cloud liquid water for this period was 54 g m-2 , and the temporally averaged satellite-based estimate of cloud liquid water within 25 km of the ship was 50 g m-2.