ALBERT

Description: The cloud scanner sensor is a central part of a recently proposed satellite remote sensing concept – the three-dimensional (3-D) cloud and aerosol interaction mission (CLAIM-3D) combining measurements of aerosol characteristics in the vicinity of clouds and profiles of cloud microphysical characteristics. Such a set of collocated measurements will allow new insights in the complex field of cloud-aerosol interactions affecting directly the development of clouds and precipitation, especially in convection. The cloud scanner measures radiance reflected or emitted by cloud sides at several wavelengths to derive a profile of cloud particle size and thermodynamic phase. For the retrieval of effective size a Bayesian approach was adopted and introduced in a preceding paper. In this paper the potential of the approach, which has to account for the complex three-dimensional nature of cloud geometry and radiative transfer, is tested in realistic cloud observing situations. In a fully simulated environment realistic cloud resolving modelling provides complex 3-D structures of ice, water, and mixed phase clouds, from the early stage of convective development to mature deep convection. A three-dimensional Monte Carlo radiative transfer is used to realistically simulate the aspired observations. A large number of cloud data sets and related simulated observations provide the database for an experimental Bayesian retrieval. An independent simulation of an additional cloud field serves as a synthetic test bed for the demonstration of the capabilities of the developed retrieval techniques.

Description: In September 2002, the first INSPECTRO campaign to study the influence of clouds on the spectral actinic flux in the lower troposphere was carried out in East Anglia, England. Measurements of the actinic flux, the irradiance and aerosol and cloud properties were made from four ground stations and by aircraft. The radiation measurements were modelled using the uvspec model and ancillary data. For cloudless conditions, the measurements of the actinic flux were reproduced by 1-D radiative transfer modelling within the measurement and model uncertainties of about ±10%. For overcast days, the ground-based and aircraft radiation measurements and the cloud microphysical property measurements are consistent within the framework of 1-D radiative transfer and within experimental uncertainties. Furthermore, the actinic flux is increased by between 60-100% above the cloud when compared to a cloudless sky, with the largest increase for the optically thickest cloud. Correspondingly, the below cloud actinic flux is decreased by about 55-65%. Just below the cloud top, the downwelling actinic flux has a maximum that is seen in both the measurements and the model results. For broken clouds the traditional cloud fraction approximation is not able to simultaneously reproduce the measured above-cloud enhancement and below-cloud reduction in the actinic flux.

Description: The libRadtran software package is a suite of tools for radiative transfer calculations in the Earth's atmosphere. Its main tool is the uvspec program. It may be used to compute radiances, irradiances and actinic fluxes in the solar and terrestrial part of the spectrum. The design of uvspec allows simple problems to be easily solved using defaults and included data, hence making it suitable for educational purposes. At the same time the flexibility in how and what input may be specified makes it a powerful and versatile tool for research tasks. The uvspec tool and additional tools included with libRadtran are described and realistic examples of their use are given. The libRadtran software package is available from http://www.libradtran.org.

Description: A new cirrus detection algorithm for the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infra-Red Imager (SEVIRI) aboard the geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG), MeCiDA, is presented. The algorithm uses the seven infrared channels of SEVIRI and thus provides a consistent scheme for cirrus detection at day and night. MeCiDA combines morphological and multi-spectral threshold tests and detects optically thick and thin ice clouds. The thresholds were determined by a comprehensive theoretical study using radiative transfer simulations for various atmospheric situations as well as by manually evaluating actual satellite observations. The cirrus detection has been optimized for mid- and high latitudes but it could be adapted to other regions as well. The retrieved cirrus masks have been validated by comparison with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Cirrus Reflection Flag. To study possible seasonal variations in the performance of the algorithm, one scene per month of the year 2004 was randomly selected and compared with the MODIS flag. 81% of the pixels were classified identically by both algorithms. In a comparison of monthly mean values for Europe and the North-Atlantic MeCiDA detected 29.3% cirrus coverage, while the MODIS SWIR cirrus coverage was 38.1%. A lower detection efficiency is to be expected for MeCiDA, as the spatial resolution of MODIS is considerably better and as we used only the thermal infrared channels in contrast to the MODIS algorithm which uses infrared and visible radiances. The advantage of MeCiDA compared to retrievals for polar orbiting instruments or previous geostationary satellites is that it permits the derivation of quantitative data every 15 min, 24 h a day. This high temporal resolution allows the study of diurnal variations and life cycle aspects. MeCiDA is fast enough for near real-time applications.

Description: The cloud scanner sensor is a central part of a recently proposed satellite remote sensing concept – the three-dimensional (3-D) cloud and aerosol interaction mission (CLAIM-3D) combining measurements of aerosol characteristics in the vicinity of clouds and profiles of cloud microphysical characteristics. Such a set of collocated measurements will allow new insights in the complex field of cloud-aerosol interactions affecting directly the development of clouds and precipitation, especially in convection. The cloud scanner measures radiance reflected or emitted by cloud sides at several wavelengths to derive a profile of cloud particle size and thermodynamic phase. For the retrieval of effective size a Bayesian approach was adopted and introduced in a preceding paper. In this paper the potential of the approach, which has to account for the complex three-dimensional nature of cloud geometry and radiative transfer, is tested in realistic cloud observing situations. In a fully simulated environment realistic cloud resolving modelling provides complex 3-D structures of ice, water, and mixed phase clouds, from the early stage of convective development to mature deep convection. A three-dimensional Monte Carlo radiative transfer is used to realistically simulate the aspired observations. A large number of cloud data sets and related simulated observations provide the database for an experimental Bayesian retrieval. An independent simulation of an additional cloud field serves as a synthetic test bed for the demonstration of the capabilities of the developed retrieval techniques. For this test case only a minimal overall bias in the order of 1% as well as pixel-based uncertainties in the order of 1 μm for droplets and 8 μm for ice particles were found for measurements at a high spatial resolution of 250 m.

Description: The paper is aimed to the derivation of the simple analytical relationship between the cloud spherical albedo and the cloud reflection function in the visible. The relationship obtained can be used for the retrieval of the spherical albedo from backscattered solar light measurements performed by radiometers on geostationary and polar orbiting satellites. The example of the application of the technique to MODIS data is shown.

Description: Ultraviolet radiation is the key factor driving tropospheric photochemistry. It is strongly modulated by clouds and aerosols. A quantitative understanding of the radiation field and its effect on photochemistry is thus only possible with a detailed knowledge of the interaction between clouds and radiation. The overall objective of the project INSPECTRO was the characterization of the three-dimensional actinic radiation field under cloudy conditions. This was achieved during two measurement campaigns in Norfolk (East Anglia, UK) and Lower Bavaria (Germany) combining space-based, aircraft and ground-based measurements as well as simulations with the one-dimensional radiation transfer model UVSPEC and the three-dimensional radiation transfer model MYSTIC. During both campaigns the spectral actinic flux density was measured at several locations at ground level and in the air by up to four different aircraft. This allows the comparison of measured and simulated actinic radiation profiles. In addition satellite data were used to complete the information of the three dimensional input data set for the simulation. A three-dimensional simulation of actinic flux density data under cloudy sky conditions requires a realistic simulation of the cloud field to be used as an input for the 3-D radiation transfer model calculations. Two different approaches were applied, to derive high- and low-resolution data sets, with a grid resolution of about 100 m and 1 km, respectively. The results of the measured and simulated radiation profiles as well as the results of the ground based measurements are presented in terms of photolysis rate profiles for ozone and nitrogen dioxide. During both campaigns all spectroradiometer systems agreed within ±10% if mandatory corrections e.g. stray light correction were applied. Stability changes of the systems were below 5% over the 4 week campaign periods and negligible over a few days. The J(O1D) data of the single monochromator systems can be evaluated for zenith angles less than 70°, which was satisfied by nearly all airborne measurements during both campaigns. The comparison of the airborne measurements with corresponding simulations is presented for the total, downward and upward flux during selected clear sky periods of both campaigns. The compliance between the measured (from three aircraft) and simulated downward and total flux profiles lies in the range of ±15%.

Description: Losses of reflected Direct Normal Irradiance due to atmospheric extinction in concentrating solar tower plants can vary significantly with site and time. The losses of the direct normal irradiance between the heliostat field and receiver in a solar tower plant are mainly caused by atmospheric scattering and absorption by aerosol and water vapor concentration in the atmospheric boundary layer. Due to a high aerosol particle number, radiation losses can be significantly larger in desert environments compared to the standard atmospheric conditions which are usually considered in raytracing or plant optimization tools. Information about on-site atmospheric extinction is only rarely available. To measure these radiation losses, two different commercially available instruments were tested and more than 19 months of measurements were collected at the Plataforma Solar de Almería and compared. Both instruments are primarily used to determine the meteorological optical range (MOR). The Vaisala FS11 scatterometer is based on a monochromatic near-infrared light source emission and measures the strength of scattering processes in a small air volume mainly caused by aerosol particles. The Optec LPV4 long-path visibility transmissometer determines the monochromatic attenuation between a light-emitting diode (LED) light source at 532 nm and a receiver and therefore also accounts for absorption processes. As the broadband solar attenuation is of interest for solar resource assessment for Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), a correction procedure for these two instruments is developed and tested. This procedure includes a spectral correction of both instruments from monochromatic to broadband attenuation. That means the attenuation is corrected for the actual, time-dependent by the collector reflected solar spectrum. Further, an absorption correction for the Vaisala FS11 scatterometer is implemented. To optimize the Absorption and Broadband Correction (ABC) procedure, additional measurement input of a nearby sun photometer is used to enhance on-site atmospheric assumptions for description of the atmosphere in the algorithm. Comparing both uncorrected and spectral- and absorption-corrected extinction data from one year measurements at the Plataforma Solar de Almería, the mean difference between the scatterometer and the transmissometer is reduced from 4.4 to 0.6%. Applying the ABC procedure without the usage of additional input data from a sun photometer still reduces the difference between both sensors to about 0.8%. Applying an expert guess assuming a standard aerosol profile for continental regions instead of additional sun photometer input results in a mean difference of 0.81%. Therefore, applying this new correction method, both instruments can now be utilized to determine the solar broadband extinction in tower plants sufficiently accurate.

Description: We introduce the improved Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) high-resolution radiation scheme FUBRad and compare it to the 4-band standard ECHAM5 SW radiation scheme of Fouquart and Bonnel (FB). Both schemes are validated against the detailed radiative transfer model libRadtran. FUBRad produces realistic heating rate variations during the solar cycle. The SW heating rate response with the FB scheme is about 20 times smaller than with FUBRad and cannot produce the observed temperature signal. A reduction of the spectral resolution to 6 bands for solar irradiance and ozone absorption cross sections leads to a degradation (reduction) of the solar SW heating rate signal by about 20%. The simulated temperature response agrees qualitatively well with observations in the summer upper stratosphere and mesosphere where irradiance variations dominate the signal. Comparison of the total short-wave heating rates under solar minimum conditions shows good agreement between FUBRad, FB and libRadtran up to the middle mesosphere (60–70 km) indicating that both parameterizations are well suited for climate integrations that do not take solar variability into account. The FUBRad scheme has been implemented as a sub-submodel of the Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy).

Description: Modifications of existing clouds by the exhaust of ships are well-known but inadequately quantified impacts, which could contribute to climate change. The perturbation of a cloud layer by ship-generated aerosol changes the cloud reflectivity and is identified by long curves in satellite images, known as ship tracks. As ship tracks indicate a pollution of a very clean marine environment and also affect the radiation budget below and above the cloud, it is important to investigate their radiative and climatic effects. Satellite-data from MODIS on Terra are used to examine a scene from 10 February 2003 where ship tracks were detected close to the North American West-Coast. The cloud optical and microphysical properties are derived using a semi-analytical retrieval technique combined with a look-up-table approach. An algorithm is presented to distinguish ship-track-pixels from the unperturbed cloud pixels in the scene and from this the optical properties of the former are compared to those of the latter. Within the ship tracks a significant change in the droplet number concentration, the effective radius and the optical thickness are found compared to the unaffected cloud. The resulting cloud properties are used to calculate the radiation budget below and above the cloud. Assuming a mean solar zenith angle of 63° for the selected scene, the mean solar surface radiation below the ship track is decreased by 43.2 Wm−2 and the mean reflectance at top of atmosphere (TOA) is increased by 40.8 Wm−2. For the entire analyzed scene the ship emission decreases the solar radiation at the surface by 2.1 Wm−2 and increases the backscattered solar radiation at TOA by 2.0 Wm−2, whereas no significant effect on thermal radiation was detected.