The effect of cloud type on Earth's energy balance: results for selected regions

Abstract

International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) C2 cloud information is compared with planetary albedo, outgoing longwave radiation (OLR), and net radiation measured at the top of the atmosphere by the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE). Principal component analysis indicates that the day-to-day variations of the abundances of the 35 cloud types of the C1 data are correlated with each other, so that for many purposes the dataset can be well represented by about five cloud types. If the total fractional area covered by clouds is divided into contributions from several distinct cloud types, the fractional coverages by these several cloud types will together form a much better prediction of radiation budget quantities than the single variable of total fractional-area cloud coverage. -from Authors