The radiative characteristics of stratocumulus clouds are dependent upon their microphysical properties, primarily the liquid water content and effective radius of the drop population. Aircraft observations of droplet spectra in warm stratocumulus over the North Atlantic and around the British Isles by the Hercules C-130 aircraft of the U.K. Meteorological Office Meteorological Research Flight have been used to calculate the radar reflectivity, liquid water content, and effective radius. Empirically derived relationships, found from more than 4000 km of flight data on 11 separate days, that link reflectivity with either liquid water content or effective radius have been derived. These empirical relationships are significantly different from those predicted if the cloud droplet spectrum is modeled as a gamma function. Occasional drizzle-sized drops are frequently present within the cloud, and even though their concentration is very low, they dominate the reflectivity and these empirical relationships fail. However, although the drizzle drops increase the reflectivity, they have a negligible effect on the liquid water content and effective radius of the cloud. As these drops have a significant fall velocity in comparison to the cloud droplets, it is suggested that a ground-based Doppler radar could separate the components of the reflectivity due to bimodal drop spectra and the vertical structure of the cloud properties that determine radiative transfer could be retrieved.
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