A Novel Ice Cloud Retrieval Algorithm for Submillimeter Wave Radiometers: Simulations and Application to an Airborne Experiment

Abstract

A retrieval methodology based on the Bayesian neural network (BNN) is presented that inverts the ice water path (IWP), mean mass-weighted diameter (D <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">me</sub> ), and cloud height of ice clouds from sub-millimeter radiometer observations. The training dataset was created using collecting cloud profiles from the DARDAR (raDAR/liDAR) database and running simulations by the Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator (ARTS) model. Since the effective radius (r <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">e</sub> ) is the size descriptor of ice particles in the DARDAR database, a look-up table of ice water content (IWC), D <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">me</sub> , and r <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">e</sub> was constructed to convert r <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">e</sub> profiles into D <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">me</sub> profiles. In addition, random noises corresponding to the measurement uncertainties of the Compact Scanning Submillimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer (CoSSIR) during the TC4 experiment were added to the simulated brightness temperatures before training the BNN. The proposed retrieval method was first applied to the simulated testing database, and then to the observations of CoSSIR. Moreover, the retrieved IWP and D <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">me</sub> were compared to the retrievals of the Bayesian Monte Carlo Integration (BMCI) method. The retrieved cloud height was assessed by cloud height extracted from the reflectivity data of the Cloud Radar System (CPS) flow on the same aircraft with CoSSIR. The comparison showed that the correlation coefficients of the retrieved IWP and D <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">me</sub> from the two methods are above 0.8, and the retrieved cloud height also showed good agreement with that extracted from the CPS.