Mixed phase clouds in the cold sectors of Southern Ocean cyclones — Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

Mixed phase clouds in the cold sectors of Southern Ocean cyclones (#401)

Simon Alexander 1 , Alain Protat 2
  1. Australian Antarctic Division, Kingston, TAS, Australia
  2. Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

We present results of cloud occurrence and phase as derived from ship-based lidar and radar observations. Two cruises made by RV Investigator (called CAPRICORN-2016 and CAPRICORN-2018) between Hobart and close to the East Antarctic coast enabled nearly-continuous monitoring of cloud distribution from the surface. We merge the separate datasets into a combined lidar-radar cloud product to quantify various cloud properties across nearly the full latitudinal extent of the Southern Ocean. We will compare these statistics with those obtained from the merged satellite data product 'DARDAR' (combining CALIOP lidar and CloudSat radar) to quantify the amount of low-level cloud which remains unreported by these satellites. We will also present results of the differences in cloud properties across the oceanic polar front boundary.

#AMOS2019