The Role of Convective Intensity in Modulating the Earth's Radiative Balance (Data)

README for datasets used in Pilewskie and L'Ecuyer, 2025, "The Role of Convective Intensity in Modulating the Earth's Radiative Balance", Journal of Climate

tropicsCO_v2_06to16_110624.csv:

Contains tropical oceanic Convective Objects (COs) and their properties identified using CloudSat and CALIPSO observations

Conditions for COs that are stored:

Convective fraction (number of convective precipitation profiles / number of all precipitation profiles in CO) > 0.2

Freezing level > 2 km

relative Center of Gravity (rCoG) - Freezing level > 1 km

Mean latitude and longitude of CO is located where the product between the convective core length and rCoG is the largest

anvil_cod_iwp_cre_06to16_040424.csv:

CloudSat 2B-FLXHR-LIDAR shortwave (SW) cloud optical depth (COD) summed over convective object anvils only profiles

Top-of-atmosphere SW, longwave (LW), and net cloud radiative effects (CREs) of each convective object anvil profile

Three files containing the number of CloudSat overpasses within 8 degree x 2 degree grid boxes separated daytime-only ('Day'), nighttime-only ('Night'), and combined day and night ('Day_and_Night'):

CSat_overpasses_8x2_Day_06to11.csv

CSat_overpasses_8x2_Night_06to11.csv

CSat_overpasses_8x2_Day_and_Night_06to11.csv