Estimating the PPH-bias for simulations of convective and stratiform clouds

The plane parallel homogeneous (PPH) approximation is known to generate systematic errors in the computation of reflectivity and transmissivity of a horizontally inhomogeneous cloud field. This PPH-bias is determined for two cloud fields, a stratocumulus and a shallow convective cloud scene, which have been simulated using a cloud resolving model. The independent column approximation has been applied as reference and a PPH analogue has been interpolated from the original cloud data. In order to correct for the bias the effective thickness approach (ETA) has been employed. For the two cloud simulations, the corresponding reduction factors have been determined.