Abstract
The demonstration of a newly developed compact thermal imager (CTI) on the International Space Station (ISS) has provided not only a technology advancement but a rich high-resolution dataset on global clouds, atmospheric and land emissions. This study showed that the free-running CTI instrument could be calibrated to produce scientifically useful radiance imagery of the atmosphere, clouds, and surfaces with a vertical resolution of ~460 m at limb and a horizontal resolution of ~80 m at nadir. The new detector demonstrated an excellent sensitivity to detect the weak limb radiance perturbations modulated by small-scale atmospheric gravity waves. The CTI’s high-resolution imaging was used to infer vertical cloud temperature profiles from a side-viewing geometry. For nadir imaging, the combined high-resolution and high-sensitivity capabilities allowed the CTI to better separate cloud and surface emissions, including those in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) that had small contrast against the background surface. Finally, based on the ISS’s orbit, the stable detector performance and robust calibration algorithm produced valuable diurnal observations of cloud and surface emissions with respect to solar local time during May–October 2019, when the CTI had nearly continuous operation.
Highlights
Innovative technology development for future land thermal imaging led to a spaceflight demonstration of the compact thermal imager (CTI) on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2018–2019 [1]
The ISS pitch-up/down operation provided a valuable opportunity for the CTI to profile the atmospheric limb radiation in the MWIR and LWIR
Because of the profile was reported from an airborne thermal imager with the potential to profile cloud high-resolution of CTI imagery, here we showed that profiling clouds from a side-viewing thermodynamic phase and microphysical properties [24]
Summary
Innovative technology development for future land thermal imaging led to a spaceflight demonstration of the compact thermal imager (CTI) on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2018–2019 [1]. The patented detector concept won NASA’s Invention of the Year for 2021. The ISS/CTI objective was to demonstrate the strained layer superlattice (SLS). The instrument was not optimized for Earth observations, its six-month, nearly continuous operation on the ISS provided a rich dataset to study and explore the value of new technology for future remote sensing of the atmosphere and clouds. The paper is organized to focus on the CTI’s atmosphere/cloud observations in the main body, while leaving the instrument’s technical notes in the Appendices A and B
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