Cloud features detected by MODIS but not by CloudSat and CALIOP

College

Gokongwei College of Engineering

Department/Unit

Center for Engineering and Sustainable Development Research

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

38

Issue

24

Publication Date

12-28-2011

Abstract

The ability to characterize the global cloud cover from space has been greatly enhanced by the availability of MODIS, CloudSat, and CALIOP data. The three sensors provide good complementary information about clouds. In this study, we investigated unexpected observations of certain types of clouds apparent in the MODIS data but not detected by CloudSat and CALIOP. Several examples are presented and generally these undetected clouds are geometrically thin, low-level clouds. In particular, they are located in the Arctic region and have optical thicknesses of less than 14, top height altitudes of below 2.5km, and layer thickness of less than 1km. CloudSat may miss such low-level clouds because of its coarse vertical resolution of about 500m and it has limited sensitivity near the surface. Unexpectedly, CALIOP with a much higher vertical resolution of 30m also misses these clouds and this is due to the cloud's geometrically thin nature and surface proximity. Copyright 2011 by the American Geophysical Union.

html

Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1029/2011GL050063

Disciplines

Electromagnetics and Photonics

Keywords

Radiometers; Clouds

Upload File

wf_no

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS