Tropical echo-top height for precipitating clouds observed by multiple active instruments aboard satellites

- The standard for precipitating clouds observed by PR and CPR is proposed.
- Regional differences occur in the underestimation of precipitating-cloud-top height by PR.
- This underestimation leads to an underestimation of the radiative forcing.
- PR-echo-top height should not be used as cloud-top height before corrections.

The echo-top height observed by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) has been used by some studies as an approximate calculation of the precipitating-cloud-top height to simulate radiative forcing or to identify overshooting convection. However, due to the low sensitivity (~ 17 dBZ) of PR, the PR-echo-top height is lower than the actual precipitating-cloud-top height. Here, the echo-top heights of the tropical precipitating cloud detected by PR, the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) were investigated to evaluate the underestimation of the PR-echo-top height to the actual precipitating-cloud-top height. The results show that there were significant spatial variations in the underestimates of precipitating-cloud-top height by PR. The model simulation showed that these underestimates led to an underestimation of the radiative forcing of the Earth system, the relative error of which was ~ 10% with 1-km underestimation and ~ 20% to 80% with 7-km underestimation when the cloud optical thickness was fixed to 10. Therefore, the underestimates of precipitating-cloud-top height by PR should be taken into consideration when using PR-echo-top height.