Oceanic warm cloud layers within multilevel cloud systems observed by satellite measurements

Low-level warm clouds are a major component in multilayered cloud systems and are generally hidden from the top-down view of satellites with passive measurements. By using spaceborne radar data with fine vertical resolution, this study conducts an investigation on oceanic warm clouds embedded in multilayered structures. The occurrences of warm cloud overlapping and the geometric features of several kinds of warm cloud layers are examined. It is found that there are three main types of cloud systems that involve warm cloud layers, including warm single layer clouds, cold-warm double layer clouds and warm-warm double layer clouds. The two types of double layer clouds account for 23% and in the double layer occurrences warm-warm double layer subsets contribute about 13%. The global distribution patterns of these three types differ from each other. Single-layer warm clouds and the lower warm clouds in the cold-warm double layer system have nearly identical geometric parameters, while the upper and lower layer warm clouds in the warm-warm double layer system are distinct from the previous two forms of warm cloud layers. In contrast to the independence of the two cloud layers in cold-warm double layer system, the two kinds of warm cloud layers in the warm-warm double layer system may be coupled. The distance between the two layers in the warm-warm double layer system is weakly dependent on cloud thickness. Given the upper and lower cloud layer with moderate thickness around 1 km, the cloudless gap reaches its maximum exceeding 600 m. As the two cloud layers become even thinner or thicker, the cloudless gap decreases in thickness. It is believed that such knowledge on cloud overlapping is critical for fully understanding the distribution of warm clouds in three-dimensional space. The results derived in this study could help validating cloud results of numerical models, which are indeed three-dimensional in nature. They could also be used to improve the estimation of cloud radiative forcing, since it is affected by cloud occurrences and especially their vertical structures. It should be pointed out that solid explanations for the above cloud features cannot be presented by only using these satellite data themselves.