Observing ice clouds in the submillimeter spectral range: the CloudIce mission proposal for ESA's Earth Explorer 8
Journal article, 2012

Passive submillimeter-wave sensors are a way to obtain urgently needed global data on ice clouds, particularly on the so far poorly characterized 'essential climate variable' ice water path (IWP) and on ice particle size. CloudIce was a mission proposal to the European Space Agency ESA in response to the call for Earth Explorer 8 (EE8), which ran in 2009/2010. It proposed a passive submillimeter-wave sensor with channels ranging from 183 GHz to 664 GHz. The article describes the CloudIce mission proposal, with particular emphasis on describing the algorithms for the data-analysis of submillimeter-wave cloud ice data (retrieval algorithms) and demonstrating their maturity. It is shown that we have a robust understanding of the radiative properties of cloud ice in the millimeter/submillimeter spectral range, and that we have a proven toolbox of retrieval algorithms to work with these data. Although the mission was not selected for EE8, the concept will be useful as a reference for other future mission proposals.

instrument

satellite-observations

radar

amsu-b

radiative-transfer simulations

cirrus clouds

volcanic ash

water

path

microwave sounding unit

clouds

transfer model

Author

S.A. Buehler

Luleå University of Technology

E. Defer

LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes du Rayonnement et de la Matiere en Astrophysique et Atmospheres

F. Evans

University of Colorado at Boulder

S. Eliasson

Luleå University of Technology

J. Mendrok

Luleå University of Technology

Patrick Eriksson

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Global Environmental Measurements and Modelling

C. Lee

Met Office

C. Jimenez

LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes du Rayonnement et de la Matiere en Astrophysique et Atmospheres

C. Prigent

LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes du Rayonnement et de la Matiere en Astrophysique et Atmospheres

S. Crewell

University of Cologne

Y. Kasai

Japan National Institute of Information and Communications Technology

R. Bennartz

University of Wisconsin Madison

A. J. Gasiewski

University of Colorado at Boulder

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques

1867-1381 (ISSN) 1867-8548 (eISSN)

Vol. 5 7 1529-1549

Subject Categories

Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

DOI

10.5194/amt-5-1529-2012

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9/6/2018 1