UC San Diego

Low coastal stratiform clouds (stratus, stratocumulus, and fog), referred to here as coastal low cloudiness (CLC), are a persistent seasonal feature of continental west coasts, including California. The importance of CLC ranges across fields, with applications ranging from solar resource forecasting, growth of endemic species, and heat wave expression and related health impacts. This dissertation improves our understanding of California's summertime CLC by describing its variability and influences on a range of scales from multidecadal to daily and continental to local. A novel achievement is the development of a new 19-year satellite-derived low cloud record. Trained on airport observations, this high resolution record plays a critical role in the description of CLC at finer spatial and shorter timescales. Observations at coastal airports from Alaska to southern California reveal coherent interannual to interdecadal variation of CLC. The leading mode of CLC variability, accounting for nearly 40% of the total variance, and the majority of individual airports, exhibit decreasing low cloudiness from 1950 to 2012. The coherent patterns of CLC variability are organized by North Pacific Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies, linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The new satellite-derived low cloud retrieval reveals, in rich spatial texture, considerable variability in CLC within May-September. The average maximum cloudiness moves northward along the coast, from northern Baja, Mexico to northern California, from May to early August. Both component parts of lower tropospheric stability (LTS), SST and free-troposphere temperature, control this seasonal movement. The peak timing of cloudiness and daytime maximum temperatures are most closely aligned in northern California. On weather timescales, daily CLC anomalies are most strongly related to stability anomalies to the north (climatologically upwind) of the CLC region. CLC is strongly linked to stability in northern (southern) California throughout (only in early) summer. Atmospheric rather than oceanic processes are responsible for the cloud dependence on stability at daily timescales. The spatial offset of the LTS-CLC relationship reveals the roles of advective processes, subsidence, and boundary layer characteristics. Free-tropospheric moisture additionally impacts CLC, implicating the North American monsoon as a factor affecting southern California's coastal climate in late summer