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Diurnal Cycle of Cloud Microphysical Properties from GOES Over the ARM Southern Great Plains

Minnis, P., and Young, D.F., National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Langley Research Center; Smith, W.L., Jr., and Heck, P.W., Analytical Services and Materials, Inc.
Ninth Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team Meeting

Cloud coverage, height and optical depth have been derived from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) data taken over the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program's Southern Great Plains (SGP) domain since 1994. While these parameters provide a valuable basis for understanding the interaction of clouds with the radiation budget, they do not provide a complete characterization of the cloud field. Phase selection has been relatively crude and the particle size for each phase has been fixed. Thus, the cloud liquid or ice water path may be biased and the radiation fields may be miscalculated because phase and particle size have substantial impacts on the computed radiation fields. This paper presents the initial results of a new analysis methodology that determines, on a semi-operational basis, the cloud optical depth, effective particle size and phase directly from half-hourly, multispectral (0.65, 3.9, 11, and 12 µm) GOES-8 imager data taken during several months over the SGP. Simultaneous measurements of the same parameters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-14 Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) taken at different viewing angles are used for estimation of uncertainty in the derived properties. The diurnal variability of these properties are examined using monthly hourly means. These results are the initial series of new datasets for the ARM satellite product. They represent a significant advance in the ARM data products and will provide a tighter constrain on radiative transfer and single column model calculations.

Note: This is the poster abstract presented at the meeting; an extended version was not provided by the author(s).