Submitting Campus
Daytona Beach
Department
Applied Aviation Sciences
Document Type
Article
Publication/Presentation Date
10-1994
Abstract/Description
Radiative transfer simulations are performed to determine how water vapor and nonprecipitating cloud liquid water and ice particles within typical midlatitude atmospheres affect brightness temperatures T-B's of moisture sounding channels used in the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) and AMSU-like instruments. The purpose is to promote a general understanding of passive top-of-atmosphere T-B's for window frequencies at 23.8, 89.0, and 157.0 GHz, and water vapor frequencies at 176.31, 180.31, and 182.31 GHz by documenting specific examples. This is accomplished through detailed analyses of T-B's for idealized atmospheres, mostly representing temperate conditions over land. Cloud effects are considered in terms of five basic properties: droplet size distribution phase, liquid or ice water content, altitude, and thickness. Effects on T-B of changing surface emissivity also are addressed. The brightness temperature contribution functions are presented as an aid to physically interpreting AMSU T-B's.
Both liquid and ice clouds impact the T-B's in a variety of ways. The T-B's at 23.8 and 89 GHz are more strongly affected by altostratus liquid clouds than by cirms clouds for equivalent water paths. In contrast, channels near 157 and 183 GHz are more strongly affected by ice clouds. Higher clouds have a greater impact on 157- and 183-GHz T-B's than do lower clouds. Clouds depress T-B's of the higher-frequency channels by suppressing, but not necessarily obscuring, radiance contributions from below. Thus, T-B's are less closely associated with cloud-top temperatures than are IR radiometric temperatures. Water vapor alone accounts for up to 89% of the total attenuation by a midtropospheric liquid cloud for channels near 183 GHz. The Rayleigh approximation is found to be adequate for typical droplet size distributions; however, Mie scattering effects from liquid droplets become important for droplet size distribution functions with modal radii greater than 20 mu m near 157 and 183 GHz, and greater than 30-40 mu m at 89 GHz. This is due mainly to the relatively small concentrations of droplets much larger than the mode radius. Orographic clouds and tropical cumuli have been observed to contain droplet size distributions with mode radii in the 30-40-mu m range. Thus, as new instruments bridge the gap between microwave and infrared to frequencies even higher than 183 GHz, radiative transfer modelers are cautioned to explicitly address scattering characteristics of such clouds.
Publication Title
Journal of Applied Meteorology
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1994)033<1133:SOTEOW>2.0.CO;2
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Grant or Award Name
NASA/MSFC grant NGT-50524
Required Publisher’s Statement
© Copyright 1994 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a web site or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (https://www.ametsoc.org/) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyrights@ametsoc.org.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Muller, B. M., Fuelberg, H. E., & Xiang, X. (1994). Simulations of the Effects of Water Vapor, Cloud Liquid Water, and Ice on AMSU Moisture Channel Brightness Temperatures. Journal of Applied Meteorology, 33(10). https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1994)033<1133:SOTEOW>2.0.CO;2
Additional Information
Dr. Muller was not affiliated with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University at the time this paper was published.