Comparison of Arctic cloud properties over sea ice and open ocean based on airborne spectral solar remote sensing

Over the last decades, the Arctic has experienced an enhanced warming, which is known as Arctic amplification. This process leads to a decrease in the amount of Arctic sea ice, which is linked by different feedback mechanisms to clouds and the related radiative properties. To analyze how the properties of these Arctic clouds could change in a future sea ice free Arctic, we completed three airborne campaigns in the marginal sea ice zone between 2017 and 2020 covering summer and winter conditions. During these campaigns we performed in-situ and remote sensing measurements to study cloud micro- and macrophysical properties and analyzed how these clouds affect the radiation budget. In this study we use the passive remote sensing measurements from these airborne observations to retrieve cloud top effective radius, liquid water path and cloud optical thickness. We found that these cloud properties differ between a sea ice surface and over open water. The airborne observations are supported by an analysis of the cloud product from the MODIS satellite. The systematic differences of clouds over sea ice and the open ocean suggests that clouds may change in a future warming Arctic environment.