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Sciences in Cold and Arid Regions ›› 2016, Vol. 8 ›› Issue (1): 72-81.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1226.2016.00072

• ARTICLES • Previous Articles    

Statistics of cloud heights over the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding region derived from CloudSat data

ShengJie Wang1, WenYing He2, HongBin Chen2, JianChun Bian2, ZhenHui Wang3   

  1. 1. China Meteorological Administration, Beijing 100081, China;
    2. LAGEO, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China;
    3. Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210044, China
  • Received:2015-07-07 Revised:2015-09-22 Published:2018-11-23
  • Contact: ShengJie Wang E-mail:wangshengjie@cma.gov.cn
  • Supported by:
    This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (40830102 and 41205016).

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Abstract: Cloud-radiation interaction has a large impact on the Earth's weather and climate change, and clouds with different heights cause different radiative forcing. Thus, the information on the statistics of cloud height and its variation in space and time is very important to global climate change studies. In this paper, cloud top height (CTH), cloud base height (CBH) and cloud thickness over regions of the Tibetan Plateau, south slope of the plateau and South Asian Monsoon are analyzed based on CloudSat data during the period from June 2006 to December 2007. The results show that frequency of CTH and CBH in unit area over the studied regions have certain temporal-spatial continuity. The CTH and CBH of different cloud types have different variation scopes, and their seasonal variations are distinct. Cloud thickness is large (small) in summer (winter), and the percentages of different cloud types also have certain regularity.

Key words: CloudSat, Tibetan Plateau, cloud height, cloud thickness

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