Evaluating the Accuracy of a High-Resolution Model Simulation through Comparison with MODIS Observations

Abstract

AbstractSynthetic infrared brightness temperatures (BTs) derived from a high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model simulation over the contiguous United States are compared with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations to assess the accuracy of the model-simulated cloud field. A sophisticated forward radiative transfer model (RTM) is used to compute the synthetic MODIS observations. A detailed comparison of synthetic and real MODIS 11-μm BTs revealed that the model simulation realistically depicts the spatial characteristics of the observed cloud features. Brightness temperature differences (BTDs) computed for 8.5–11 and 11–12 μm indicate that the combined numerical model–RTM system realistically treats the radiative properties associated with optically thin cirrus clouds. For instance, much larger 11–12-μm BTDs occurred within thin clouds surrounding optically thicker, mesoscale cloud features. Although the simulated and observed BTD probability distributions for optically thin cirrus clouds had a similar range of positive values, the synthetic 11-μm BTs were much colder than observed. Previous studies have shown that MODIS cloud optical thickness values tend to be too large for thin cirrus clouds, which contributed to the apparent cold BT bias in the simulated thin cirrus clouds. Errors are substantially reduced after accounting for the observed optical thickness bias, which indicates that the thin cirrus clouds are realistically depicted during the model simulation.