John M. Haynes

CloudSat's Cloud Profiling Radar After Two Years in Orbit: Performance, Calibration, and Processing

The Cloud Profiling Radar, the sole science instrument of the CloudSat Mission, is a 94-GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by hydrometeors (clouds and precipitation) as a function of distance from the radar. This instrument has been acquiring global time series of vertical cloud structures since June 2, 2006. In this paper, an overview of the radar performance and status, to date, is provided together with a description of the basic data products and the surface clutter rejection algorithm introduced for the Release 04 data product release.

A Multipurpose Radar Simulation Package: QuickBeam

The launch of the CloudSat cloud radar has provided some of the first near-global views of the threedimensional structure of clouds from space. To evaluate clouds in numerical models and compare them to the observations made by CloudSat, it is useful to have a tool that converts modeled clouds to radar returns that might be viewed by a radar system on a satellite passing over the model domain. QuickBeam is a user-friendly radar simulation package that performs this function and is freely available to the meteorological community. The workings of the simulator are briefly described and several applications of the simulator to numerical models are demonstrated.

Major Characteristics of Southern Ocean Cloud Regimes and Their Effects on the Energy Budget

Clouds over the Southern Ocean are often poorly represented by climate models, but they make a significant contributiontothetop-of-atmosphere(TOA)radiationbalance,particularlyintheshortwaveportionoftheenergy spectrum. This study seeks to better quantify the organization and structure of Southern Hemisphere midlatitude clouds by combining measurements from active and passive satellite-based datasets. Geostationary and polarorbitersatellitedatafromtheInternationalSatelliteCloudClimatologyProject(ISCCP)areusedtoquantifylargescale,recurring modesofcloudiness,andactiveobservationsfrom CloudSatand Cloud–Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) are used to examine vertical structure, radiative heating rates, and precipitation associated with these clouds. It is found that cloud systems are organized into eight distinct regimes and that ISCCP overestimates the midlevel cloudiness of these regimes. All regimes contain a relatively high occurrenceoflowcloud,with79%ofallcloudlayersobservedhavingtopsbelow3 km,butmultiple-layered clouds systems are present in approximately 34% of observed cloud profiles. The spatial distribution of regimes varies according to season, with cloud systems being geometrically thicker, on average, during the austral winter. Those regimes found to be most closely associated with midlatitude cyclones produce precipitation the most frequently, although drizzle is extremely common in low-cloud regimes. The regimes associated with cyclones have the highest in-regime shortwave cloud radiative effect at the TOA, but the low-cloud regimes, by virtue of their high frequency of occurrence over the oceans, dominate both TOA and surface shortwave effects in this region as a whole.

A comparison of simulated cloud radar output from the multiscale modeling framework global climate model with CloudSat cloud radar observations

[1] Over the last few years a new type of global climate model (GCM) has emerged in which a cloud-resolving model is embedded into each grid cell of a GCM. This new approach is frequently called a multiscale modeling framework (MMF) or superparameterization. In this article we present a comparison of MMF output with radar observations from the NASA CloudSat mission, which uses a near-nadir-pointing millimeter-wavelength radar to probe the vertical structure of clouds and precipitation. We account for radar detection limits by simulating the 94 GHz radar reflectivity that CloudSat would observe from the high-resolution cloud-resolving model output produced by the MMF. Overall, the MMF does a good job of reproducing the broad pattern of tropical convergence zones, subtropical belts, and midlatitude storm tracks, as well as their changes in position with the annual solar cycle. Nonetheless, the comparison also reveals a number of model shortfalls including (1) excessive hydrometeor coverage at all altitudes over many convectively active regions, (2) a lack of low-level hydrometeors over all subtropical oceanic basins, (3) excessive low-level hydrometeor coverage (principally precipitating hydrometeors) in the midlatitude storm tracks of both hemispheres during the summer season (in each hemisphere), and (4) a thin band of low-level hydrometeors in the Southern Hemisphere of the central (and at times eastern and western) Pacific in the MMF, which is not observed by CloudSat. This band resembles a second much weaker ITCZ but is restricted to low levels.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE The Distribution of Rainfall over Oceans from Spaceborne Radars

A combination of rainfall estimates from the 13.8-GHz Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) and the 94-GHz CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) is used to assess the distribution of rainfall intensity over tropical and subtropical oceans. These two spaceborne radars provide highly complementary information: the PR provides the best information on the total rain volume because of its ability to estimate the intensity of all but the lightest rain rates while the CPR’s higher sensitivity provides superior rainfall detection as well as estimates of drizzle and light rain. Over the TRMM region between 358S and 358N, rainfall frequency from the CPR is around 9%, approximately 2.5 times that detected by the PR, and the CPR estimates indicate a contribution by light rain that is undetected by the PR of around 10% of the total. Stratifying the results by total precipitable water (TPW) as a proxy for rainfall regime indicates dramatic differences over stratus-dominated subsidence regions, with nearly 20% of the total rain occurring as light rain. Over moist tropical regions, the CPR substantially underestimates rain from intense convective storms because of large attenuation and multiple-scattering effects while the PR misses very little of the total rain volume because of a lower relative contribution from light rain. Over low-TPW regions, however, inconsistencies between estimates from the PR and the CPR point to uncertainties in the algorithm assumptions that remain to be understood and addressed.

On the diurnal cycle of deep convection, high‐level cloud, and upper troposphere water vapor in the Multiscale Modeling Framework

embeds a cloud-resolving model (CRM) at each grid column of a general circulation model to replace traditional parameterizations of moist convection and large-scale condensation. This study evaluates the diurnal cycle of deep convection, high-level clouds, and upper troposphere water vapor by applying an infrared (IR) brightness temperature (Tb) and a precipitation radar (PR) simulator to the CRM column data. Simulator results are then compared with IR radiances from geostationary satellites and PR reflectivities from the TropicalRainfallMeasuringMission(TRMM).Whiletheactualsurfaceprecipitationratein the MMF has a reasonable diurnal phase and amplitude when compared with TRMM observations, the IR simulator results indicate an inconsistency in the diurnal anomalies of high-level clouds between the model and the geostationary satellite data. Primarily because of its excessive high-level clouds, the MMF overestimates the simulated precipitation index (PI) and fails to reproduce the observed diurnal cycle phase relationships among PI, high-level clouds, and upper troposphere relative humidity. The PR simulator results show that over the tropical oceans, the occurrence fraction of reflectivity in excess of 20 dBZ is almost 1 order of magnitude larger than the TRMM data especially at altitudes above 6 km. Both results suggest that the MMF oceanic convection is overactive and possible reasons for this bias are discussed. However, the joint distribution of simulated IR Tb and PR reflectivity indicates that the most intense deep convection is found more often over tropical land than ocean, in agreement with previous observational studies.

CloudSat Precipitation Profiling Algorithm—Model Description

Abstract Identifying and quantifying the intensity of light precipitation at global scales is still a difficult problem for most of the remote sensing algorithms in use today. The variety of techniques and algorithms employed for such a task yields a rather wide spectrum of possible values for a given precipitation event, further hampering the understanding of cloud processes within the climate. The ability of CloudSat’s millimeter-wavelength Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) to profile not only cloud particles but also light precipitation brings some hope to the above problems. Introduced as version zero, the present work uses basic concepts of detection and retrieval of light precipitation using spaceborne radars. Based on physical principles of remote sensing, the radar model relies on the description of clouds and rain particles in terms of a drop size distribution function. Use of a numerical model temperature and humidity profile ensures the coexistence of mixed phases otherwise undetected by the CPR. It ...

A Comparison of Precipitation Occurrence from the NCEP Stage IV QPE Product and the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar

AbstractBecause of its extensive quality control procedures and uniform space–time grid, the NCEP Stage IV merged Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) radar and surface rain gauge dataset is often considered to be the best long-term gridded dataset of precipitation observations covering the contiguous United States. Stage IV accumulations are employed in a variety of applications, and while the WSR-88D systems are well suited for observing heavy rain events that are likely to affect flooding, limitations in surface radar and gauge measurements can result in missed precipitation, especially near topography and in the western United States. This paper compares hourly Stage IV observations of precipitation occurrence to collocated observations from the 94-GHz CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar, which provides excellent sensitivity to light and frozen precipitation. Statistics from 4 yr of comparisons show that the CloudSat observes precipitation considerably more frequently than the Stage IV dataset...

The Structure of Low-Altitude Clouds over the Southern Ocean as Seen by CloudSat

AbstractA climatology of the structure of the low-altitude cloud field (tops below 4 km) over the Southern Ocean (40°–65°S) in the vicinity of Australia (100°–160°E) has been constructed with CloudSat products for liquid water and ice water clouds. Averaging over longitude and time, CloudSat produces a roughly uniform cloud field between heights of approximately 750 and 2250 m across the extent of the domain for both winter and summer. This cloud field makes a transition from consisting primarily of liquid water at the lower latitudes to ice water at the higher latitudes. This transition is primarily driven by the gradient in the temperature, which is commonly between 0° and −20°C, rather than by direct physical observation.The uniform lower boundary is a consequence of the CloudSat cloud detection algorithm being unable to reliably separate radar returns because of the bright surface versus returns due to clouds, in the lowest four range bins above the surface. This is potentially very problematic over t...

An Evaluation of Rainfall Frequency and Intensity over the Australian Region in a Global Climate Model

Abstract Observed regional rainfall characteristics can be analyzed by examining both the frequency and intensity of different categories of rainfall. A complementary approach is to consider rainfall characteristics associated with regional synoptic regimes. These two approaches are combined here to examine daily rainfall characteristics over the Australian region, providing a target for model simulations. Using gridded daily rainfall data for the period 1997–2007, rainfall at each grid point and averaged over several sites is decomposed into the frequency of rainfall events and the intensity of rainfall associated with each event. Daily sea level pressure is classified using a self-organizing map, and rainfall on corresponding days is assigned to the resulting synoptic regimes. This technique is then used to evaluate rainfall in the new Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS) global climate model and separate the influence of large-scale circulation errors and errors due to the r...