Abstract

Clouds have a large contribution to the earth's radiation budget (Ramanathan et al., 1989). Changes of cloud optical thickness and droplet size will bring a large climatic change (Liou and Ou, 1989). A cooling effect due to increasing cloud albedo with increasing anthropogenic cloud condensation nuclei may be comparable with the earth's warming due to CO₂ increase (Twomey et al., 1984; Wigley, 1989; Radke et al., 1989). Therefore it is very important to study the cloud optical characteristics. In this paper we present results from our retrieval of the cloud optical thickness and effective droplet radius of marine stratocumulus clouds observed in the Marine Stratocumulus Intensive Field Observation (IFO), which is one component of the First ISCCP Regional Experiment (FIRE) (Albrecht et al., 1988).

© 1990 Optical Society of America