Cloud Optical Properties from the Multifilter Shadowband Radiometer (MFRSRCLDOD). An ARM Value-Added Product

Technical Report · Sat Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1237958· OSTI ID:1237958

Turner, D. D. ^[1]; McFarlane, S. A. ^[1]; Riihimaki, L. ^[2]; Shi, Y. ^[2]; Lo, C. ^[2]; Min, Q. ^[3]

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1. DOE ARM Climate Research Facility, Washington, DC (United States)
2. DOE ARM Climate Research Facility, Washington, DC (United States); Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
3. State University of New York, Albany; DOE ARM Climate Research Facility, Washington, DC (United States)

The microphysical properties of clouds play an important role in studies of global climate change. Observations from satellites and surface-based systems have been used to infer cloud optical depth and effective radius. Min and Harrison (1996) developed an inversion method to infer the optical depth of liquid water clouds from narrow band spectral Multifilter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (MFRSR) measurements (Harrison et al. 1994). Their retrieval also uses the total liquid water path (LWP) measured by a microwave radiometer (MWR) to obtain the effective radius of the warm cloud droplets. Their results were compared with Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) retrieved values at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Southern Great Plains (SGP) site (Min and Harrison 1996). Min et al. (2003) also validated the retrieved cloud optical properties against in situ observations, showing that the retrieved cloud effective radius agreed well with the in situ forward scattering spectrometer probe observations. The retrieved cloud optical properties from Min et al. (2003) were used also as inputs to an atmospheric shortwave model, and the computed fluxes were compared with surface pyranometer observations.

• Research Organization: DOE ARM Climate Research Facility, Washington, DC (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
• OSTI ID: 1237958
• Report Number(s): DOE/SC-ARM/TR--139
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING