Droplet vertical sizing in warm clouds using passive opticalmeasurements from a satellite

[摘要] In this paper a new algorithm for the determination of the verticaldistribution of the droplet effective radius in shallow warm clouds isproposed. The method is based on the fact that the spectraltop-of-atmosphere reflectance in the near IR spectral range depends on thevertical profile of the effective radius of droplets. The retrieval is basedon the optimal estimation method and direct radiative transfer calculationsof respective weighting functions. The applications of the method both tosynthetic and satellite data are presented. An important feature of the method is the fact that thecloud optical thickness and cloud effective radius are found using the standard homogeneous cloudretrieval and then the retrievals are improved assuming the type of the droplet effective radius profile.

[学科分类] 几何与拓扑