Cloud-Aerosol Lidar And Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations Data Research Articles

Evaluation of upper tropospheric humidity forecasts from ECMWF using AIRS and CALIPSO data

Abstract. An evaluation of the upper tropospheric humidity from the European Centre of Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Integrated Forecast System (IFS) is presented. We first make an analysis of the spinup behaviour of ice supersaturation in weather forecasts. It shows that a spinup period of at least 12 h is necessary before using forecast humidity data from the upper troposphere. We compare the forecasted upper tropospheric humidity with coincident relative humidity fields retrieved from the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) and with cloud vertical profiles from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO). The analysis is made over one year, from October 2006 to September 2007, and we discuss how relative humidity and cloud features appear both in the IFS and in the observations. The comparison with AIRS is made difficult because of the vertical resolution of the sounder and the impossibility to retrieve humidity for high cloudiness. Clear sky relative humidities show a rather good correlation whereas cloudy situations reflect more the effect of a dry bias for AIRS increasing with the relative humidity. The comparison with CALIPSO shows that the IFS predicts high relative humidity where CALIPSO finds high clouds, which supports the good quality of the ECMWF upper tropospheric cloud forecast. In a last part, we investigate the presence of ice supersaturation within low vertical resolution pressure layers by comparing the IFS outputs for high-resolution and low-resolution humidity profiles and by simulating the interpolation of humidity over radiosonde data. A new correction method is proposed and tested with these data.

A global survey of CALIPSO linear depolarization ratios in ice clouds: Initial findings

Linear depolarization ratio (δ) data from the summer/winter seasons over the first 2 years of Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite operations in the green (0.532 μm) laser channel are analyzed and interpreted in terms of ice cloud microphysical properties. That is, we use variations in δ as a proxy of cloud formation and environmental conditions that affect ice crystal shape and orientation. The cloud detection algorithm is tuned mainly to cirrus clouds, but also includes polar stratospheric clouds (PSC) and optically thin, low and midlevel ice clouds at high latitudes. As anticipated from ground‐based polarization lidar studies, δ increase with increasing height/decreasing temperature, and the effects of horizontally oriented plate crystals in lowing δ are evident by comparing data obtained close to the nadir (0.3°) and off‐nadir (3.0°) pointing directions. These differences in δ average 0.01–0.03, although this anisotropic scattering effect is particularly apparent at low altitudes in the mid and high latitudes. Unexpected findings include decreasing δ with increasing latitude, and δ in detected PSC that are usually similar to cirrus clouds. However, δ in PSC are lower in a belt in the lower stratosphere in the Southern Hemisphere and generally lower in the Northern Hemisphere, but higher in lower stratospheric nacreous clouds in both hemispheres. There are also significant differences in the ice cloud δ measured at night and day, but this is assumed to result from factors associated with day/night differences in CALIPSO data collection. Global average δ are 0.34–0.36 for day, and 0.23–0.26 for night.

Deriving Marine-Boundary-Layer Lapse Rate from Collocated CALIPSO, MODIS, and AMSR-E Data to Study Global Low-Cloud Height Statistics

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> Global cloud-top height statistics of marine-boundary-layer clouds are derived from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Level 2 aerosol and cloud layer products. The boundary-layer lapse rate in the northeast region of the Pacific Ocean is investigated using sea surface temperature (SST) data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E), cloud-top temperature data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and cloud-top height data from CALIPSO. Based on the lapse rate derived from the combined CALIPSO/MODIS/AMSR-E measurements, cloud-top heights in regions within CALIPSO tracks are derived from AMSR SST and MODIS cloud temperature to test the validity of this approach. For homogeneous low-level clouds, the results agree with the cloud-top height from the collocated CALIPSO cloud-top height measurements. These results suggest that the database of derived lapse rates from the combined measurements can be applied to study cloud-top height climate statistics using the MODIS and AMSR data when CALIPSO observations are not available. </para>

Upper tropospheric humidity and cirrus geometrical and optical thickness: Relationships inferred from 1 year of collocated AIRS and CALIPSO data

Profiles of relative humidity with respect to ice (RHice) determined from spaceborne passive remote sensing suffer a lack of vertical and spatial resolutions. RHice distributions show dry biases compared to in situ observations because geometrically thin moist layers are integrated within coarser vertical resolutions, a direct effect being the underestimation of ice supersaturation (RHice &gt; 100%) occurrence. Collocated data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and the Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) provide the opportunity to investigate relationships between RHice and geometrical thickness and optical depth of high clouds near the tropopause. “Apparent” optical depths are derived for single‐layer high clouds from CALIPSO. By comparing these “apparent” optical depths to cloud infrared emissivities derived from AIRS the multiple scattering contribution is estimated and the optical depths are corrected. Mean RHice increases with cloud geometrical thickness but remains low compared to 100% except for very vertically extended clouds. Optically thicker clouds show on average larger geometrical thickness and larger relative humidity than optically thinner clouds. However, for a comparable geometrical thickness, optically thinner clouds are on average slightly more humid. This study concludes that cloud geometrical thickness has a greater influence than cloud optical depth on RHice integrated within a coarse vertical resolution. Limitations of AIRS humidity observations regarding the detection of ice supersaturation are discussed.

Depolarization ratio and attenuated backscatter for nine cloud types: analyses based on collocated CALIPSO lidar and MODIS measurements

This paper reports on the relationship between lidar backscatter and the corresponding depolarization ratio for nine types of cloud systems. The data used in this study are the lidar returns measured by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) aboard the Cloud- Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite and the collocated cloud products derived from the observations made by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard Aqua satellite. Specifically, the operational MODIS cloud optical thickness and cloud-top pressure products are used to classify cloud types on the basis of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) cloud classification scheme. While the CALIPSO observations provide information for up to 10 cloud layers, in the present study only the uppermost clouds are considered. The layer-averaged attenuated backscatter (gamma') and layer-averaged depolarization ratio (delta) from the CALIPSO measurements show both water- and ice-phase features for global cirrus, cirrostratus, and deep convective cloud classes. Furthermore, we screen both the MODIS and CALIPSO data to eliminate cases in which CALIPSO detected two- or multi-layered clouds. It is shown that low gamma' values corresponding to uppermost thin clouds are largely eliminated in the CALIPSO delta-gamma' relationship for single-layered clouds. For mid-latitude and polar regions corresponding, respectively, to latitude belts 30 degrees -60 degrees and 60 degrees -90 degrees in both the hemispheres, a mixture of water and ice is also observed in the case of the altostratus class. MODIS cloud phase flags are also used to screen ice clouds. The resultant water clouds flagged by the MODIS algorithm show only water phase feature in the delta-gamma' relation observed by CALIOP; however, in the case of the ice clouds flagged by the MODIS algorithm, the co-existence of ice- and water-phase clouds is still observed in the CALIPSO delta-gamma' relationship.

CALIPSO observations of stratospheric aerosols: a preliminary assessment

Abstract. We have examined the 532-nm aerosol backscatter coefficient measurements by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) for their use in the monitoring of stratospheric aerosol. CALIPSO makes observations that span from 82° S to 82° N each day and, for each profile, backscatter coefficient values reported up to ~40 km. The possibility of using CALIPSO for stratospheric aerosol monitoring is demonstrated by the clear observation of the 20 May 2006 eruption of Montserrat in the earliest CALIPSO data in early June as well as by observations showing the 7 October 2006 eruption of Tavurvur (Rabaul). However, the very low aerosol loading within the stratosphere makes routine observations of the stratospheric aerosol far more difficult than relatively dense volcanic plumes. Nonetheless, we found that averaging a complete days worth of nighttime-only data into 5-deg latitude by 1-km vertical bins yields a stratospheric aerosol distribution that is fairly consistent with past measurements by spaceborne instruments. Based on comparisons with 2004 data from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment, the derived values are close to expectation except in the tropics where they are larger by about a factor of 2. The cause of the difference in the tropics is not readily apparent but is most likely related to difficulties in the lidar calibration process currently found in the CALIOP data at tropical latitudes.

Retrievals of profiles of fine and coarse aerosols using lidar and radiometric space measurements

The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) spaceborne lidar, expected to be launched in 2004, will collect profiles of the lidar attenuated backscattering coefficients of aerosol and clouds at 0.53 and 1.06 /spl mu/m. The measurements are sensitive to the vertical distribution of aerosols. However, the information is insufficient to be mapped into unique aerosol physical properties and vertical distribution. Spectral radiances measured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) on the Aqua spacecraft, acquired simultaneously with the CALIPSO observations, can constrain the solutions. The combination of the MODIS and CALIPSO data can be used to derive extinction profiles of the fine and coarse modes of the aerosol size distribution for aerosol optical thickness of 0.1 and larger. Here we describe a new inversion method developed to invert simultaneously MODIS and CALIPSO data over glint-free ocean. The method is applied to aircraft lidar and MODIS data collected over a dust storm off the coast of West Africa during the Saharan Dust Experiment (SHADE). The backscattering-to-extinction ratio (BER) (BER=/spl omega//sub o/P(180)/4/spl pi/) can be retrieved from the synergism between measurements avoiding a priori hypotheses required for inverting lidar measurements alone. For dust, the resultant value of BER =0.016 sr/sup -1/ is over 50% smaller than what is expected using Mie theory, but in good agreement with recent results obtained from Raman lidar observations of dust episodes. The inversion is robust in the presence of 10% and 20% noise in the lidar signal at 0.53 and 1.06 /spl mu/m, respectively. Calibration errors of the lidar of 5% to 10% can cause an error in optical thickness of 20% to 40%, respectively, in the tested cases.