Quantifying the impact of solar zenith angle, cloud optical thickness, and surface albedo on the solar radiative effect of Arctic low-level clouds over open ocean and sea ice

Abstract

Arctic low-level clouds play an important, albeit uncertain, role in the Arctic climate system. Consequently, their effect on the radiative energy budget (REB) is subject to considerable uncertainty as well. To reduce this uncertainty and to assess the importance of processes driving the cloud radiative effect (CRE), it is crucial to quantitatively disentangle the impact of essential parameters that non-linearly affect the CRE. Therefore, this study uses a CRE parameterization and low-level airborne REB observations in combination with an approach similarly applied in climate dynamics to quantify the contributions of the concurrently observed solar zenith angle (SZA), cloud optical thickness, and surface albedo on the solar CRE at the surface. Based on a case study characterized by inhomogeneous cloud and surface conditions in the marginal sea ice zone, it is shown that the surface albedo contributed more than 95 % to the solar CRE difference between open ocean and sea ice. Using the same approach, the analysis is extended to observations from a series of aircraft campaigns and indicates that the variability in the non-cloud properties SZA and surface albedo between seasons and surface types, respectively, has a larger impact on the resulting difference in the solar CRE than the variability in cloud properties.