This means that ecosystem affects both cloud formation and cloud properties, i.e., cloud formed more often at vegetation covered areas, and these clouds tend to have larger droplet sizes. The possible mechanism involved is that vegetation plays a role in increasing water vapor content and decreasing aerosol amount in the air. Thus resulted less CCN number density and larger amount of water vapor content lead to larger cloud droplet sizes. Further investigations at regional scales are being conducted currently. We expect detailed relationship for specific regions.
Ecosystems have impact on aerosol distributions.
Because aerosols are considered having direct and indirect effect on climate changes, we studied the hypothesized aerosol indirect effect by using the retrieved results. The results of variations of cloud droplet sizes are consistent with expectations for variations in aerosol loading. Statistics shows that for most regions and most times, at 0.99 significance level, southern hemisphere clouds have larger droplet sizes than northern hemisphere clouds. In reality, LWP changes dramatically at both small scale and large scale. Regional studies also show that the difference of visible reflectances is negligible between polluted cloud and unpolluted stratiform clouds with droplet sizes differing by a factor of two.