Analyzing the Thermodynamic Phase Partitioning of Mixed Phase Clouds Over the Southern Ocean Using Passive Satellite Observations

The thermodynamic phase transition of clouds is still not well understood, therefore, the partitioning ice and liquid in mixed often misrepresented numerical models. We use 12 years cloud observations from geostationary Spinning Enhanced Visible InfraRed Imager over Southern Ocean to detect which contain both pixels at their tops we retrieve microphysical radiative properties each object. results show that large droplet effective radius coincides with high fraction optical thickness for top temperatures higher than −8 °C. also found density pixel clusters increases fraction, lower 0.5, suggesting a multiplication pockets line previous studies, particularly efficient perimeter fractal dimension.