Climate monitoring Europe – Maps of Cloud coverage – WMO-region RA VI

Clouds play a crucial role in the climate system by altering earth radiation and water balance. They reflect incoming shortwave (solar) radiation and cool the earth’s surface but at the same time warm the earth’s surface by absorbing outgoing long wave (thermal) radiation and radiating it back to the earth’s surface (greenhouse effect). Further, clouds supply water to the earth by producing precipitation.

Clouds have a large influence on the climate but in turn, a changing climate will also affect the formation of clouds. However, it is poorly known whether cloud changes would diminish or enhance warming. Therefore, detailed knowledge on clouds is crucial for the understanding of climate change.

Traditionally, cloud coverage is derived by ground-based observations either by eye observations or by automatic detection systems. These data generally suffer from poor station coverage in many regions. Due to the ability of space-based instruments to detect clouds, satellite data can account for these shortcomings by providing high-resolution data over large areas.

Within RCC-CM, gridded data and maps are produced regularly for monthly cloud cover and its anomalies from a reference state (1971-2000) to display the main areas of reduced or enhanced cloudiness in the RA VI Region. Monthly cloud cover can be used for various applications, e.g. energy, tourism, human health and all issues concerning climate variability and climate change.

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