Abstract:Based on ISCCP(International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project), CERES(Clouds and the Eart's Radiant Energy System), MODIS(Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellite inversion cloud products from 2007 to 2016, a comparative analysis of the macro and micro characteristics of the cloud structure in China in the past decade was made. The composite evaluation index is used to quantitatively evaluate the temporal and spatial consistency between these data sets. The results show that the three sets of satellite data can better reflect the distribution characteristics of the total cloud cover in China, which is high in the south(east) and low in the north(west), and high in summer and low in winter. However, by comparing temporal skill (ST) and spatial skill (SS) of the composite evaluation index and its components, it was found that the evolution characteristics of the total cloud cover time series retrieved by CERES and ISCCP data are significantly more consistent than MODIS. The spatial and temporal characteristics of the south is better than the north, and the summer is better than the winter. Further analysis of the ST scores of different heights of cloud cover found that the difference in total cloud cover of CERES and ISCCP data in the southern region is mainly due to the absolute deviation of low cloud cover, while the bias in the northern region exists in both low and medium cloud. The comparative analysis of the effective radius of the cloud drop retrieved by MODIS and CERES found that the ice phase cloud corresponding to the high cloud has a higher consistency, while the deviation of the liquid phase cloud corresponding to the middle and low cloud is much higher in summer than in winter. The analysis of cloud droplet size and probability density of liquid and ice phase in summer shows that compared with CERES data, the effective radius of cloud droplet size of different phases retrieved by MODIS has different degrees of overestimation in different regions, while the liquid (ice) water spectrum width is wider (narrower).