Comparison of CMIP5 cloud cover simulation with remote sensing data for African cordex domain

Author

González, Albano ; Pérez, Juan C. ; Díaz, Juan P. ; Expósito, Francisco J. ; Enríquez, Aarón ; Taima, David

Author_Institution

Grupo de Observacion de la Tierra y la Atmosfera, Univ. de La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain

fYear

2012

fDate

22-27 July 2012

Firstpage

848

Lastpage

851

Abstract

In this work, a comparison between cloud cover data obtained from ISCCP database and different simulation results from GCMs included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) has been conducted, to evaluate the skills of these models to reproduce the climatological behaviour of cloud cover over the African continent during approximately two decades, 1984 to 2005. The behaviour of all the models is very similar, they underestimate the total cloud cover but show a good space-time correlation with satellite data. However, the separate analysis of low, mid and high cloud cover produces worse results. One of the areas that show important differences correspond to marine boundary layer clouds near the coast of Namibia.

Keywords

atmospheric boundary layer; clouds; remote sensing; AD 1984 to 2005; African cordex domain; CMIP5 cloud cover simulation; Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5; ISCCP database; Namibia coast; climatological behaviour; cloud cover data; good space-time correlation; marine boundary layer clouds; remote sensing data; satellite data; Atmospheric modeling; Clouds; Computational modeling; Data models; Meteorology; Numerical models; Satellites; CMIP5; Cloud cover; ISCCP; climate;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2012 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Munich

ISSN

2153-6996

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-1160-1

Electronic_ISBN

2153-6996

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IGARSS.2012.6351428

Filename

6351428