ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-9-3461-2009 Exploring the differences in cloud properties observed by the Terra and Aqua MODIS Sensors Meskhidze N. 1 Remer L. A. 2 Platnick S. 2 Negrón Juárez R. 3 Lichtenberger A. M. 1 Aiyyer A. R. 1 Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 20771, USA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA 29 05 2009 9 10 3461 3475 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/3461/2009/acp-9-3461-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/3461/2009/acp-9-3461-2009.pdf

The aerosol-cloud interaction in different parts of the globe is examined here using multi-year statistics of remotely sensed data from two MODIS sensors aboard NASA's <i>Terra</i> (morning) and <i>Aqua</i> (afternoon) satellites. Simultaneous retrievals of aerosol loadings and cloud properties by the MODIS sensor allowed us to explore morning-to-afternoon variation of liquid cloud fraction (CF) and optical thickness (COT) for clean, moderately polluted and heavily polluted clouds in different seasons. Data analysis for seven-years of MODIS retrievals revealed strong temporal and spatial patterns in morning-to-afternoon variation of cloud fraction and optical thickness over different parts of the global oceans and the land. For the vast areas of stratocumulus cloud regions, the data shows that the days with elevated aerosol abundance were also associated with enhanced afternoon reduction of CF and COT pointing to the possible reduction of the indirect climate forcing. A positive correlation between aerosol optical depth and morning-to-afternoon variation of trade wind cumulus cloud cover was also found over the northern Indian Ocean, though no clear relationship between the concentration of Indo-Asian haze and morning-to-afternoon variation of COT was established. Over the Amazon region during wet conditions, aerosols are associated with an enhanced convective process in which morning shallow warm clouds are organized into afternoon deep convection with greater ice cloud coverage. Analysis presented here demonstrates that the new technique for exploring morning-to-afternoon variability in cloud properties by using the differences in data products from the two daily MODIS overpasses is capable of capturing some of the major features of diurnal variations in cloud properties and can be used for better understanding of aerosol radiative effects.

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