Presence Of Liquid Water Clouds Research Articles

Assessments of Ali, Dome A, and Summit Camp for mm-wave Observations Using MERRA-2 Reanalysis

Abstract NASA’s latest MERRA-2 reanalysis of the modern satellite measurements has made atmospheric data easily accessible with unprecedented uniformity, fidelity, and completeness. In this paper, these data are used to evaluate five sites for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) observations. These include two established sites (South Pole and Chajnantor, Atacama), and three new sites (Ali in Tibet, Dome A in Antarctica, and Summit Camp in Greenland). Atmospheric properties including precipitable water vapor (PWV), sky brightness temperature fluctuations, and ice and liquid water paths are derived and compared. Dome A emerges to be the best among those evaluated, with PWV and fluctuations smaller than the second-best site, South Pole, by more than a factor of 2. It is found that the higher site in Ali (6100 m) is on par with Cerro Chajnantor (5612 m) in terms of transmission and stability. The lower site in Ali (5250 m) planned for the first stage of observations at 90/150 GHz provides conditions comparable to those on the Chajnantor Plateau. These analyses confirm Ali to be an excellent mm-wave site in the Northern Hemisphere that will complement well-established Southern sites. According to MERRA-2 data, the observing conditions at Summit Camp are also comparable to Cerro Chajnantor. However, it is more affected by the presence of liquid water clouds.

Passive microwave remote sensing of the historic February 2010 snowstorms in the Middle Atlantic region of the USA

AbstractThe snowfall in the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan area during the winter of 2009/2010 was unprecedented and caused serious snow‐related disruptions. In February 2010, snowfall totals approached 2 m, and because maximum temperatures were consistently below normal, snow remained on the ground the entire month. One of the biggest contributing factors to the unusually severe winter weather in 2009/2010, throughout much of the middle latitudes, was the Arctic Oscillation. Unusually high pressure at high latitudes and low pressure at middle latitudes forced a persistent exchange of mass from north to south. In this investigation, a concerted effort was made to link remotely sensed falling snow observations to remotely sensed snow cover and snowpack observations in the Baltimore/Washington area. Specifically, the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer onboard the Aqua satellite was used to assess snow water equivalent, and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit‐B and Microwave Humidity Sounder were employed to detect falling snow. Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer passive microwave signatures in this study are related to both snow on the ground and surface ice layers. In regard to falling snow, signatures indicative of snowfall can be observed in high frequency brightness temperatures of Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit‐B and Microwave Humidity Sounder. Indeed, retrievals show an increase in snow water equivalent after the detection of falling snow. Yet, this work also shows that falling snow intensity and/or the presence of liquid water clouds impacts the ability to reliably detect snow water equivalent. Moreover, changes in the condition of the snowpack, especially in the surface features, negatively affect retrieval performance. Copyright © 2011. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Accurate Liquid Water Path Retrieval from Low-Cost Microwave Radiometers Using Additional Information from a Lidar Ceilometer and Operational Forecast Models

Abstract Water clouds have an important impact on the radiative balance of the earth. The use of ground-based dual-frequency microwave radiometers to derive both liquid water path (LWP) and water vapor path (WVP) is well established, but uncertainties over the dry, water vapor, and liquid water absorption coefficients and the radiometric calibration can lead to errors in the retrieved LWP. A method in which additional information from a lidar ceilometer is used to identify the presence of liquid water clouds and their altitude is described. When such clouds are absent, the radiometric calibrations of the two frequencies are optimally adjusted so that the retrieved LWP is forced to zero; when they are present the calibrations are interpolated from the nearest clear-sky periods before and after, and the temperature of the cloud is used to refine the liquid water absorption coefficient (with the temperature profile taken from a forecast model). This procedure is insensitive to the choice of absorption model, removes the troublesome negative values of LWP that can be retrieved, and provides more accurate values of low LWP in thin clouds. Analysis shows that LWP as low as 10 g m−2 can be reliably retrieved, 90% of the time the error being less than 50%, and for LWP greater than 20 g m−2 the error is less than 10%. An additional advantage is that the retrieval can tolerate uncertainties in the various absorption coefficients and is unaffected by slow drifts in brightness temperature errors of up to 5 K. Previous techniques have required that these temperatures be accurate to 0.5 K or better, which entails careful calibration and can be quite difficult to achieve.

Rainbows, Polarization, and the Search for Habitable Planets

Current proposals for the characterization of extrasolar terrestrial planets rest primarily on the use of spectroscopic techniques. While spectroscopy is effective in detecting the gaseous components of a planet's atmosphere, it provides no way of detecting the presence of liquid water, the defining characteristic of a habitable planet. In this paper, I investigate the potential of an alternative technique for characterizing the atmosphere of a planet using polarization. By looking for a polarization peak at the "primary rainbow" scattering angle, it is possible to detect the presence of liquid droplets in a planet's atmosphere and constrain the nature of the liquid through its refractive index. Single scattering calculations are presented to show that a well-defined rainbow scattering peak is present over the full range of likely cloud droplet sizes and clearly distinguishes the presence of liquid droplets from solid particles such as ice or dust. Rainbow scattering has been used in the past to determine the nature of the cloud droplets in the Venus atmosphere and by the POLarization and Directionality of Earth Reflectances (POLDER) instrument to distinguish between liquid and ice clouds in the Earth atmosphere. While the presence of liquid water clouds does not guarantee the presence of water at the surface, this technique could complement spectroscopic techniques for characterizing the atmospheres of potential habitable planets. The disk-integrated rainbow peak for Earth is estimated to be at a degree of polarization of 12.7% or 15.5% for two different cloud cover scenarios. The observation of this rainbow peak is shown to be feasible with the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronograph mission in similar total integration times to those required for spectroscopic characterization.

Potential for estimating cloud liquid water path over sea ice from airborne passive microwave measurements

[1] In this paper we investigate the feasibility of determining cloud liquid water path from passive microwave measurements over sea ice. Simulations using a 32-stream plane-parallel microwave radiative transfer model indicate a consistent increase in brightness temperature attributable to cloud liquid water for conditions observed in the Arctic during the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic (SHEBA) experiment. Uncertainties in brightness temperature simulations due to variations in surface emissivity, surface temperature, cloud temperature, and atmospheric water vapor are investigated. Surface emissivity variations are found to cause the largest uncertainties in top-of-atmosphere brightness temperature over the range of liquid water paths examined. An algorithm previously developed for estimating liquid water path over oceans from SSM/I data is adapted for retrievals over sea ice. The algorithm is applied to brightness temperature measurements from airborne microwave radiometers. Mean retrieved liquid water path (LWP) is compared to in situ measurements from airborne cloud microphysical probes. The correlation coefficient for the two data sets is found to be 0.989 with an RMS error of 14 g m � 2 , although the retrieved LWP values show a high degree of variability. Accuracy is highest when LWP values are 100 g m � 2 and above. Poorest accuracies are obtained for small LWP (<50 g m � 2 ) where errors in the specification of surface emissivity have a large effect. These case studies provide evidence that liquid water clouds over sea ice produce detectable changes in microwave brightness temperature and suggest that interpretation of sea ice properties using certain microwave frequencies may be affected by the presence of liquid water clouds. INDEX TERMS: 0320 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Cloud physics and chemistry, 3349 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Polar meteorology, 3360 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Remote sensing, 3394 Meteorology and Atmospheric Dynamics: Instruments and techniques; KEYWORDS: cloud physics, microwave remote sensing, arctic clouds, liquid water path, airborne measurements

The role of clouds in tropospheric photochemistry

We show that photochemical processes in the lower half of the troposphere are strongly affected by the presence of liquid water clouds. Especially CH2O, an important intermediate of CH4 (and of other hydrocarbon) oxidation, is subject to enhanced breakdown in the aqueous phase. This reduces the formation of HO x -radicals via photodissociation of CH2O in the gas phase. In the droplets, the hydrated form of CH2O, its oxidation product HCO2 −, and H2O2 recycle O2 − radicals which, in turn, react with ozone. We show that the latter reaction is a significant sink for O3. Further O3 concentrations are reduced as a result of decreased formation of O3 during periods with clouds. Additionally, NO x , which acts as a catalyst in the photochemical formation of O3, is depleted by clouds during the night via scavenging of N2O5. This significantly reduces NO x -concentrations during subsequent daylight hours, so that less NO x is available for O3 production. Clouds thus directly reduce the concentrations of O3, CH2O, NO x , and HO x . Indirectly, this also affects the budgets of other trace gases, such as H2O2, CO, and H2.