Assessing VIIRS cloud base height products with data collected at the Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement sites

作者：Fitch, Kyle E.^*; Hutchison, Keith D.; Bartlett, Kevin S.; Wacker, Robert S.; Gross, Kevin C.

来源：International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2016, 37(11): 2604-2620.

DOI：10.1080/01431161.2016.1182665

• IMAGER RADIOMETER SUITE
• ENVIRONMENTAL SATELLITE SYSTEM
• OPTICAL-THICKNESS
• SOLAR-RADIATION
• MODIS
• TIME
• SENSITIVITY
• INSTRUMENT
• RETRIEVAL
• MODEL

A system-level analysis has been completed to assess the accuracy of cloud base height (CBH) products of lower-altitude water clouds created from Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) data collected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). While the analysis focused on the CBH products, it necessarily included an assessment of other key, upstream VIIRS cloud products, including VIIRS cloud top height (CTH), VIIRS cloud optical thickness (COT), and VIIRS cloud effective particle size (EPS). The COT and EPS products are used to derive a geometric cloud thickness, which is then subtracted from the CTH product to generate the CBH product. Thus, a system-level analysis is critical to establishing the detailed algorithm error budget needed to identify the major sources of errors in the CBH product and help focus future research efforts to improve this important cloud product. As a consequence, ground-based data collected at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites became most useful for conducting this system-level analysis. Therefore, match-up data sets were created between VIIRS cloud products and DOE ARM site data sets from June 2013 to October 2015, and while the primary focus was on the highest-quality data at the Lamont, OK ARM site, data were analysed from a total of four ARM sites. The initial results showed the errors in the VIIRS CBH products, compared to the ARM site data sets, to be large and highly variable; however, errors in VIIRS COT and the derived VIIRS cloud geometric thickness were much smaller. Consequently, the VIIRS CTH products were replaced with the ARM CTH products, which substantially reduced the variability and errors in the VIIRS CBH products. It is concluded that the performance of the VIIRS CBH products is most strongly correlated with errors in the VIIRS CTH products, while errors in COT and geometric cloud thicknesses are acceptable. Thus, future research is needed to reduce the errors in the VIIRS CTH products in order to ensure the VIIRS CBH products are suitable for civilian and military aerodrome operations.

• 出版日期2016
• 单位中国人民解放军空军电子技术研究所