CIRRUS PHYSICAL PROPERTIES FROM SATELLITE TIROS-N OPERATIONAL VERTICAL SOUNDER (TOVS) OBSERVATIONS

摘要

The Improved Initialization Inversion (3I) algorithm (Scott et al., 1999) converts TIROS-N Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS) observations (Smith et al., 1979) from the NOAA Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites into atmospheric temperature and water vapor profiles, as well as into cloud and surface properties at a spatial resolution of 1° Within the framework of the NOAA/NASA Pathfinder Program, eight years of TOVS data (NOAA-10, NOAA-11 and NOAA-12) have already been processed. Several efforts have been undertaken to retrieve cirrus microphysical properties on a global scale: Han et al. (1997) use International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) clouds (Rossow et al., 1999) and their optical thickness (only during day) combined with a radiative transfer model treating ice crystals as hexagonal columns, and Baran et al. (1998b) consider measurements at 1 km spatial resolution from the dual-viewing Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) and a radiative transfer model based on Anomalous Diffraction Approximation (ADA) (Mitchell et al., 1996). In another study, Baran et al. (1998a) demonstrated for selected cases the possibility to retrieve cirrus ice crystal size information at relatively low spatial resolution of TOVS observations.