Potential of retrieving shallow-cloud life cycle from future generation satellite observations through cloud evolution diagrams: A suggestion from a large eddy simulation

We investigated the temporal evolution of two types of diagram produced by a three-dimensional large-eddy simulation: the Contoured Frequency Optical Depth Diagram (CFODD) and the correlation pattern between the cloud droplet effective radius and the cloud optical thickness (RE-COT pattern). The CFODD obtained by statistically method, in the past study, suggested that the transition of cloud stages were included in the diagram, but this paper is the first paper that confirms similar structure in the CFODD obtained by time-series analysis. Our results suggest that a part of the cloud lifecycle; transition from the non-drizzle to drizzle stage can be well expressed by the CFODD of individual clouds. While, the cloud lifecycle on the RE-COT pattern was obscure. This advantage of CFODD over the RE-COT pattern arises because the CFODD uses vertical information of the inner cloud, whereas the effective radius of the RE-COT diagram presents property near the cloud top. Our results emphasize that future satellite observations should retrieve vertical information such as the effective radius at each height with high frequency to capture the lifecycle of individual clouds. This paper presents useful suggestion that will be useful to the satellite user community for retrieving the shallow-cloud lifecycle.