A197-08
Sub-millimeter strategies for observing the diurnal cycle of tropical ice clouds

Tuesday, 15 December 2020: 10:21
Virtual
Ralf Bennartz, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States, Dong Liang Wu, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Cent, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Ian S Adams, Naval Research Lab DC, Remote Sensing Division, Washington, DC, United States, Paul Racette, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Jie Gong, GEST, Greenbelt, MD, United States and Ashok Kumar Gupta, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, United States
Abstract:
Tropical ice clouds play an important role in the earth’s radiation budget. They also exhibit a strong and complex diurnal cycle that is currently not fully understood and that poses significant challenges to our modeling capabilities in the context of weather prediction and climate modeling.

In this presentation, we discuss which types of ice clouds are particularly relevant to the radiation budget in terms of their ice water path, effective radius, and their diurnal cycle. We then present observational strategies that will enable us to observe the diurnal cycle of those clouds using novel and cost-effective strategies. The observational concept is built on a combination of polarized submillimeter and polarized infrared instruments flown on one or more smallsats in a non-sunsynchronous low earth orbit.

<< Previous Abstract | Next Abstract >>