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UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
FACULTY OF PHYSICS Guest
2024-11-22 2:07 |
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Conference: Bucharest University Faculty of Physics 2015 Meeting
Section: Atmosphere and Earth Science; Environment Protection
Title:
Evaluating MODIS cloud microphysical parameters with in situ observations from the ATMOSLAB aircraft
Authors:
Sorin GHEMULET (1), Andreea BOSCORNEA(1,2), Sorin VAJAIAC (1,2) and Sabina STEFAN(1)
Affiliation:
(1) University of Bucharest, Faculty of Physics, P.O.BOX MG-11, Magurele, Bucharest, Romania
(2) National Institute for Aerospace Research “Elie Carafoli” INCAS - Bucharest, Romania
E-mail
boscornea.a@gmail.com
Keywords:
clouds, effective radius, Satellite measurements,
Abstract:
Through their ability to reflect radiation, clouds influence climate, the depth of the cloud and the cloud droplet dimensions determine the efficiency of the reflection. Low level clouds which cover vast areas of the planet have a high susceptibility to changes in cloud properties due to aerosols and can play a large role in climate change. Satellites can monitor and provide information regarding these clouds and their changes (King et al., 2013). Two of the most important cloud parameters, governing their radiative properties, are cloud optical thickness and droplet effective radius. Operational measurements of effective radius and cloud optical thickness from space can be made by inverting observations of reflected solar radiation at two or more wavelengths (Platnick et al., 2003). The greater optical thickness of clouds limits cloud property validation through surface based observations. However, in situ aircraft measurements during field campaigns provide a platform in which the same properties from the MODIS cloud products can be calculated using the cloud droplet distribution from cloud droplet probes. Here, 5 low level clouds data from airborne measurements over Romania are used to compare collocated overpasses of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) (King et al., 1997) aboard the Aqua and Terra satellite platforms with. Cloud products including cloud effective radius (re) and cloud optical thickness (COT) are analysed. The airborne data was collected using the Romanian research aircraft ATMOSLAB, property of the National Institute for Aerospace Research – INCAS.
References:
King, M. D., Tsay, S. C., Platnick, S. E., Wang, M., & Liou, K. N. (1997). Cloud retrieval algorithms for MODIS: Optical thickness, effective particle radius, and thermodynamic phase. MODIS Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document, 1997.
King, N. J., Bower, K. N., Crosier, J., & Crawford, I. (2013). Evaluating MODIS cloud retrievals with in situ observations from VOCALS-REx. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 13(1), 191-209.
Platnick, S., King, M. D., Ackerman, S., Menzel, W. P., Baum, B., Riédi, J. C., & Frey, R. (2003). The MODIS cloud products: Algorithms and examples from Terra. Geoscience and Remote Sensing, IEEE Transactions on, 41(2), 459-473.
Acknowledgement:
The authors acknowledge the MODIS Science team for the Science Algorithms, the Processing Team for producing MODIS data, and the GES DAAC MODIS Data Support Team for making MODIS data available to the user community.
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