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[1] The variability of overcast low stratiform clouds observed over the ARM Climate Research Facility Southern Great Plains (ACRF SGP) site is analyzed, and an approach to characterizing subgrid variability based on assumed statistical distributions is evaluated. The analysis is based on a vast (>1000 hours) radar reflectivity database collected by the Millimeter-Wave Cloud Radar at ACRF SGP site. The radar data are classified into two low cloud categories and stratified by scale and the presence of precipitation. Cloud variability is analyzed by studying statistical distributions for the first two moments of the probability distribution functions (PDF) of radar reflectivity. Results indicate that variability for a broadly defined low-altitude stratiform cloud type exhibits on average 40% greater standard deviation than canonical boundary layer clouds topped by an inversion. Cloud variability also dramatically depends on microphysical processes (as manifested in radar reflectivity) and increases by 2-5 times within a typical reflectivity range. Finally, variability is a strong function of scale and almost doubles in the 20-100 min temporal scale range. Formulations of subgrid variability, based on PDFs of reflectivity, are evaluated for the two cloud types and two scales of 10 and 30 km, taken to be representative of mesoscale and NWP model grid sizes. The results show that for these cloud types and scales the PDF of reflectivity can be reasonably well approximated by a truncated Gaussian function, specified by mean and standard deviation with the latter parameterized as a linear function of the mean.

The indirect shortwave effect of anthropogenic sulfate aerosol augmentation in marine stratocumulus clouds has been evaluated using global cloud climatology, sulfate aerosol data from a chemical model, and cloud albedo augmentation obtained from a large‐eddy simulation (LES) cloud model with explicit microphysics. It is found that the annually and globally (over the oceans) averaged indirect shortwave forcing is −1.1 Wm−2 with a hemispheric difference of 0.4 Wm−2. Given the many uncertainties in the aerosol‐CCN‐cloud microstructure links, this estimate, most likely, should be considered as an upper limit of the aerosol indirect forcing. The hemispheric forcing has a strong seasonal cycle with the Northern Hemisphere (NH) forcing exceeding the Southern Hemisphere (SH) forcing during the NH spring and summer and the SH forcing prevailing during the SH spring and summer. We also estimate that the single layer St/Sc contributes most to the aerosol indirect forcing (60%) with an additional 25% from the St/Sc overlapped with Ci/Cs/Cc, and 15% from St/Sc overlapped with As/Ac.

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