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Title: Summertime Continental Shallow Cumulus Cloud Detection Using GOES-16 Satellite and Ground-Based Stereo Cameras at the DOE ARM Southern Great Plains Site

Journal Article · · Remote Sensing
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13122309· OSTI ID:1805221
 [1];  [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [3]
  1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
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Summertime continental shallow cumulus clouds (ShCu) are detected using Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-16 reflectance data, with cross-validation by observations from ground-based stereo cameras at the Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Southern Great Plains site. A ShCu cloudy pixel is identified when the GOES reflectance exceeds the clear-sky surface reflectance by a reflectance detection threshold of ShCu, ΔR. We firstly construct diurnally varying clear-sky surface reflectance maps and then estimate the ΔR. A GOES simulator is designed, projecting the clouds reconstructed by stereo cameras towards the surface along the satellite’s slanted viewing direction. The dynamic ShCu detection threshold ΔR is determined by making the GOES cloud fraction (CF) equal to the CF from the GOES simulator. Although there are temporal variabilities in ΔR, cloud fractions and cloud size distributions can be well reproduced using a constant ΔR value of 0.045. The method presented in this study enables daytime ShCu detection, which is usually falsely reported as clear sky in the GOES-16 cloud mask data product. Using this method, a new ShCu dataset can be generated to bridge the observational gap in detecting ShCu, which may transition into deep precipitating clouds, and to facilitate further studies on ShCu development over heterogenous land surface.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
1805221
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1813997; OSTI ID: 1833218
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL-822078
Journal Information:
Remote Sensing, Vol. 13, Issue 12; ISSN 2072-4292
Publisher:
MDPICopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
GOES-16
GOES-R
Advanced Baseline Imager
cloud
shallow cumulus clouds
stereo camera