Broadband Radiative Quantities for the EarthCARE Mission: The ACM-COM and ACM-RT Products

Cole, Jason N. S.; Barker, Howard; Qu, Zhipeng; Shephard, Mark W.

doi:10.5194/amt-2022-304

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Inclusion of aerosols into EarthCARE's radiative closure assessments (Barker et al, 2022) requires they be specified in the forward radiative transfer calculations (Cole et al, 2022). The specification is done following the HETEAC model.…”

Section: Radiative Closure Assessments: the Acm-rt Productmentioning

confidence: 99%

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HETEAC – The Hybrid End-To-End Aerosol Classification model for EarthCARE

Wandinger

Floutsi

Baars

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. The Hybrid End-To-End Aerosol Classification (HETEAC) model for the Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission is introduced. The model serves as the common baseline for development, evaluation, and implementation of EarthCARE algorithms. It guarantees the consistency of different aerosol products from the multi-instrument platform and facilitates the conform specification of broad-band optical properties needed for EarthCARE radiative closure assessments. While the hybrid approach ensures that the theoretical description of aerosol microphysical properties is consistent with the optical properties of the measured aerosol types, the end-to-end model permits the uniform representation of aerosol types in terms of microphysical, optical, and radiative properties. Four basic aerosol components with prescribed microphysical properties are used to compose various natural and anthropogenic aerosols of the troposphere. The components contain weakly and strongly absorbing fine-mode as well as spherical and non-spherical coarse-mode particles and thus are representative for pollution, smoke, sea salt, and dust, respectively. Their microphysical properties are selected such that a good coverage of the observational phase space of intensive, i.e., concentration-independent, optical aerosol properties derived from EarthCARE measurements is obtained. Mixing rules to calculate optical and radiative properties of any aerosol blend composed of the four basic components are provided. Applications of HETEAC in the generation of test scenes, the development of retrieval algorithms for stand-alone and synergistic aerosol products from EarthCARE's Atmospheric Lidar (ATLID) and Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI), as well as for radiative closure assessments are discussed. In the end, conclusions for future development work are drawn.

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Section: Radiative Closure Assessments: the Acm-rt Productmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The radiative transfer models used to generate the ATLID-CPR-MSI Radiative Transfer (ACM-RT) product work with optical properties averaged over wavelength intervals (Cole et al, 2022). Averaging of the aerosol single-scattering optics over the intervals was done using wavelength-specific weighting.…”

Section: Radiative Closure Assessments: the Acm-rt Productmentioning

confidence: 99%

HETEAC – The Hybrid End-To-End Aerosol Classification model for EarthCARE

Wandinger

Floutsi

Baars

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…At each profile, it uses information available from the radar-only measurements provided in the form of the following products, as described by Kollias et al (2022b): the CPR feature mask and radar reflectivity (C-FMR), CPR cloud Doppler (C-CD) parameters, and CPR target classification (C-TC). The C-CLD algorithm derives the best estimates of cloud and precipitation microphysics that feed into the composite cloud and aerosol profiles product (ACM-COM, ATmospheric LIDar-Cloud Profiling Radar-MultiSpectral Instrument composite; Cole et al, 2022) as explained in Eisinger et al (2023). The main re-trieved quantities consist of the water mass content and particle characteristic size.…”

Section: Description Of the Algorithmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cloud and precipitation microphysical retrievals from the EarthCARE Cloud Profiling Radar: the C-CLD product

et al. 2023

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Abstract. The Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) satellite mission is a joint endeavour developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and features a 94 GHz Doppler Cloud Profiling Radar. This paper presents the theoretical basis of the cloud and precipitation microphysics (C-CLD) EarthCARE Level 2 (L2) algorithm. The C-CLD algorithm provides the best estimates of the vertical profiles of water mass content and hydrometeor characteristic size, obtained from radar reflectivity, path-integrated signal attenuation and hydrometeor sedimentation Doppler velocity estimates using optimal estimation (OE) theory. To obtain the forward model relations and the associated uncertainty, an ensemble-based method is used. This ensemble consists of a collection of in situ measured drop size distributions that cover natural microphysical variability. The ensemble mean and standard deviation represent the forward model relations and their microphysics-based uncertainty. The output variables are provided on the joint standard grid horizontal and EarthCARE Level 1b (L1b) vertical grid (1 km along track and 100 m vertically). The OE framework is not applied to liquid-only clouds in drizzle-free and lightly drizzling conditions, where a more statistical approach is preferred.

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“…The passive imager MSI provides observations of columnar aerosol and cloud properties across a 150 km wide swath (Docter et al, 2023;Hünerbein et al, 2023b, a), which are used to extend the 2D cross sections from lidar and radar into the 3D domain (Haarig et al, 2023;Qu et al, 2023). With this approach, 3D radiation modeling and closure assessments become possible; i.e., modeled TOA radiances and fluxes can be compared with those derived from BBR measurements (Cole et al, 2022;Barker et al, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cloud top heights and aerosol layer properties from EarthCARE lidar observations: the A-CTH and A-ALD products

Wandinger,

Haarig,

Baars

et al. 2023

Atmos. Meas. Tech.

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Abstract. The high-spectral-resolution Atmospheric Lidar (ATLID) on the Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) provides vertically resolved information on aerosols and clouds with unprecedented accuracy. Together with the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR), the Multi-Spectral Imager (MSI), and the Broad-Band Radiometer (BBR) on the same platform, it allows for a new synergistic view on atmospheric processes related to the interaction of aerosols, clouds, precipitation, and radiation at the global scale. This paper describes the algorithms for the determination of cloud top height and aerosol layer information from ATLID Level 1b (L1b) and Level 2a (L2a) input data. The ATLID L2a Cloud Top Height (A-CTH) and Aerosol Layer Descriptor (A-ALD) products are developed to ensure the provision of atmospheric layer products in continuation of the heritage from the Cloud–Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO). Moreover, the products serve as input for synergistic algorithms that make use of data from ATLID and MSI. Therefore, the products are provided on the EarthCARE joint standard grid (JSG). A wavelet covariance transform (WCT) method with flexible thresholds is applied to determine layer boundaries from the ATLID Mie co-polar signal. Strong features detected with a horizontal resolution of 1 JSG pixel (approximately 1 km) or 11 JSG pixels are classified as thick or thin clouds, respectively. The top height of the uppermost cloud layer together with information on cloud layering are stored in the A-CTH product for further use in the generation of the ATLID-MSI Cloud Top Height (AM-CTH) synergy product. Aerosol layers are detected as weaker features at a resolution of 11 JSG pixels. Layer-mean optical properties are calculated from the ATLID L2a Extinction, Backscatter and Depolarization (A-EBD) product and stored in the A-ALD product, which also contains the aerosol optical thickness (AOT) of each layer, the stratospheric AOT, and the AOT of the entire atmospheric column. The latter parameter is used to produce the synergistic ATLID-MSI Aerosol Column Descriptor (AM-ACD) later in the processing chain. Several quality criteria are applied in the generation of A-CTH and A-ALD, and respective information is stored in the products. The functionality and performance of the algorithms are demonstrated by applying them to common EarthCARE test scenes. Conclusions are drawn for the application to real-world data and the validation of the products after the launch of EarthCARE.

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Broadband Radiative Quantities for the EarthCARE Mission: The ACM-COM and ACM-RT Products

Cited by 9 publications

References 34 publications

HETEAC – The Hybrid End-To-End Aerosol Classification model for EarthCARE

HETEAC – The Hybrid End-To-End Aerosol Classification model for EarthCARE

Cloud and precipitation microphysical retrievals from the EarthCARE Cloud Profiling Radar: the C-CLD product

Cloud top heights and aerosol layer properties from EarthCARE lidar observations: the A-CTH and A-ALD products

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