A 10 year cloud climatology over Scandinavia derived from NOAA advanced very high resolution radiometer imagery

Results from a satellite-based method to compile regional cloud climatologies covering the Scandinavian region are presented. Systematic processing of multispectral image data from the NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument has been utilized to provide monthly cloud climatologies covering the period 1991-2000. Considerable local-scale variation of cloud amounts was found in the region. The inland Baltic Sea and adjacent land areas exhibited a large-amplitude annual cycle in cloudiness (high cloud amounts in winter, low cloud amounts in summer) whereas a weak-amplitude reversed annual cycle (high cloud amounts with a weak maximum in summer) was found for the Scandinavian mountain range. As a contrast, conditions over the Norwegian Sea showed high and almost unchanged cloud amounts during the course of the year. Some interesting exceptions to these patterns were also seen locally. The quality of the satellite-derived cloud climatology was examined through comparisons with climatologies derived from surface cloud observations, from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) and from the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts ERA-40 data set. In general, cloud amount deviations from surface observations were smaller than 10% except for some individual winter months, when the separability between clouds and snow-covered cold land surfaces is often poor. The ISCCP data set showed a weaker annual cycle in cloudiness, generally caused by higher summer-time cloud amounts in the region. Very good agreement was found with the ERA-40 data set, especially for the summer season. However, ERA-40 showed higher cloud amounts than SCANDIA and ISCCP during the winter season. The derived cloud climatology is affected by errors due to temporal AVHRR sensor degradation, but they appear to be small for this particular study. The data set is proposed as a valuable data set for validation of cloud description in numerical weather prediction and regional climate simulation models. Copyright (C) 2003 Royal Meteorological Society.