New product on monthly occurrences by cloud type developed by AERIS/ICARE

As part of the preparation for the CNES/ISA C3IEL (Cluster for Cloud evolution, Climate and Lightning) space mission, the need was expressed to be able to identify the areas with the greatest probability of the presence of cloud systems exhibiting deep convection. To answer this, AERIS/ICARE has developed a new product which counts the number of monthly occurrences by cloud types in a 0.72×0.72° cell. It relies on the cloud masks provided by CLOUDSAT products either RADAR only (2B-CLDCLASS ), or RADAR/LIDAR (2B- CLDCLASS-LIDAR ). In addition to deep convection systems, the types of clouds taken into account in these syntheses are altocumulus, altostratus, cirrus, cumulus, nimbostratus, stratocumulus, stratus, classified by day, night and by cirrus clouds presence. Production is currently still in progress, but ultimately, these products will cover the entire period of CLOUDSAT availability, namely from June 2006 to August.