The Characteristics of Cloud Microphysical Properties in East Asiawith the CloudSat Dataset

The distribution and seasonal variations of cloud microphysical properties in East Asia (including the liquid water content (LWC), ice water content (IWC), liquid water path (LWP), ice water path (IWP), effective radius, and number concentrations) are analyzed based on the CloudSat dataset from Jan.2007 to Dec.2010.East Asia is divided into five sub-regions for this paper, and are defined as the North, South, Northwest, Tibet Plateau, and East Ocean.The results show that the IWP is less than 700 g m^-2 over all of East Asia.The higher values are located south of 40° N.The IWP is at its maximum at 394.3 g m^-2 in the South region in summer and at its minimum of 78.5 g m^-2 in the Northwest region in winter.The LWP is less than 600 g m^-2.The maximum LWP is 300.8 g m^-2 and 281.5 g m^-2 over the East Ocean in winter and the South in summer, respectively.The maximum IWC occurs near the height of 8 km over the South in summer.East Asia's maximum LWC is 360 mg m^-3 at an altitude of 1-2 km.The largest ice (liquid) number concentration in East Asia is 150 L^-1 (80 cm^-3) and both these values are larger in summer.The largest ice effective radius in East Asia is 90 μm and occurred at around 5 km.East Asia's liquid effective radius is generally lower than 10 km.Its largest value reaches 10-12 mm at 1-2 km altitude.Two peaks are shown in the probability distribution function (PDF) of both the ice and liquid number concentrations, and most of the other cloud microphysical variables show single peak PDFs.The results reported here provide an observational basis for simulations of cloud microphysical properties by global or regional climate models in East Asia.