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NASA NTRS1990

Cirrus microphysics and radiative transfer: A case study

During the Cirrus Intensive Field Operations of FIRE, data collected by the NCAR King Air in the vicinity of Wausau, WI on October 28 were selected to study the influence of cirrus cloud microphysics on radiative transfer and the role of microphysical approximations in radiative transfer models. The instrumentation of the King Air provided, aside from temperature and wind data, up-and downwelling broadband solar and infrared fluxes as well as detailed microphysical data. The aircraft data, supplied every second, are averaged over the 7 legs to represent the properties for that altitude. The resulting vertical profiles, however, suffer from the fact that each leg represents a different cloud column path. Based on the measured microphysical data particle size distributions of equivalent spheres for each cloud level are developed. Accurate radiative transfer calculations are performed, incorporating atmospheric and radiative data from the ground and the stratosphere. Comparing calculated to the measured up- and downwelling fluxes at the seven cloud levels for both the averaged and the three crossover data will help to assess the validity of particle size and shape approximation as they are frequently used to model cirrus clouds. Once agreement is achieved the model results may be applied to determine, in comparison to a cloudfree case, the influence of this particular cirrus on the radiation budget of the earth atmosphere system.

Kinne, Stefan A.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Radiation Transfer in the Atmosphere: Scattering

Sunlight illuminating the Earth's atmosphere is scattered by gas molecules and suspended particles, giving rise to blue skies, white clouds, and optical displays such as rainbows and halos. By scattering and absorbing the shortwave solar radiation and the longwave radiation emitted by the underlying surface, cloud and aerosol particles strongly affect the radiation budget of the terrestrial climate system. As a consequence of the dependence of scattering characteristics on particle size, morphology, and composition, scattered light can be remarkably rich in information on particle properties and thus provides a sensitive tool for remote retrievals of macro- and microphysical parameters of clouds and aerosols.

Earth atmosphere↗

NASA NTRS1994

Microphysical modeling of cirrus. 2: Sensitivity studies

The one-dimensional cirrus model described in part 1 of this issue has been used to study the sensitivity of simulated cirrus microphysical and radiative properties to poorly known model parameters, poorly understood physical processes, and environmental conditions. Model parameters and physical processes investigated include nucleation rate, mode of nucleation (e.g., homogeneous freezing of aerosols and liquid droplets or heterogeneous deposition), ice crystal shape, and coagulation. These studies suggest that the leading sources of uncertainty in the model are the phase change (liquid-solid) energy barrier and the ice-water surface energy which dominate the homogeneous freezing nucleation rate and the coagulation sticking efficiency at low temperatures which controls the production of large ice crystals (radii greater than 100 mcirons). Environmental conditions considered in sensitivity tests were CN size distribution, vertical wind speed, and cloud height. We found that (unlike stratus clouds) variations in the total number of condensation nuclei (NC) have little effect on cirrus microphysical and radiative properties, since nucleation occurs only on the largest CN at the tail of the size distribution. The total number of ice crystals which nucleate has little or no relationship to the number of CN present and depends primarily on the temperature and the cooling rate. Stronger updrafts (more rapid cooling) generate higher ice number densities, ice water content, cloud optical depth, and net radiative forcing. Increasing the height of the clouds in the model leads to an increase in ice number density, a decrease in effective radius, and a decrease in ice water content. The most prominent effect of increasing cloud height was a rapid increase in the net cloud radiative forcing which can be attributed to the change in cloud temperature as well as change in cloud ice size distributions. It has long been recognized that changes in cloud height or cloud area have the greatest potential for causing feedbacks on climate change. Our results suggest that variations in vertical velocity or cloud microphysical changes associatd with cloud height changes may also be important.

Jensen, Eric J.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Optically Thin Liquid Water Clouds: Their Importance and Our Challenge

Many of the clouds important to the Earth's energy balance, from the tropics to the Arctic, are optically thin and contain liquid water. Longwave and shortwave radiative fluxes are very sensitive to small perturbations of the cloud liquid water path (LWP) when the liquid water path is small (i.e., < g/sq m) and, thus, the radiative properties of these clouds must be well understood to capture them correctly in climate models. We review the importance of these thin clouds to the Earth's energy balance, and explain the difficulties in observing them. In particular, because these clouds are optically thin, potentially mixed-phase, and often (i.e., have large 3-D variability), it is challenging to retrieve their microphysical properties accurately. We describe a retrieval algorithm intercomparison that was conducted to evaluate the issues involved. The intercomparison included eighteen different algorithms to evaluate their retrieved LWP, optical depth, and effective radii. Surprisingly, evaluation of the simplest case, a single-layer overcast cloud, revealed that huge discrepancies exist among the various techniques, even among different algorithms that are in the same general classification. This suggests that, despite considerable advances that have occurred in the field, much more work must be done, and we discuss potential avenues for future work.

Turner, D. D.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Path to Improving Simulated Properties of Low Clouds over the Beaufort Sea using Airborne In Situ Observations of Subgrid-Scale Variability

Arctic low clouds influence the evolution of the Arctic system through their effects on radiative fluxes, boundary layer mixing, stability, turbulence, humidity, and precipitation. Unfortunately, atmospheric models and retrospective analysis (reanalysis) products struggle to accurately simulate the occurrence and properties of low clouds in the Arctic. One of the main reasons for this problem are the possible unrealistic assumptions that models/reanalyses make about the subgrid-scale (SGS) variability of meteorological properties, as well as the relationship between SGS variability and grid-scale (GS) cloud properties. We utilize cloud and thermodynamic data of low level (primarily) liquid clouds collected from two aircraft campaigns conducted over the Beaufort Sea to better understand and characterize this problem. Examining data from the September 2014 Arctic Radiation-IceBridge Sea and Ice Experiment (ARISE) airborne campaign reveals that GS cloud water variability is closely related with SGS distribution of total water (i.e. water vapor + cloud water). Multiple models/reanalyses use SGS supersaturated total water (relative to GS saturation) as a threshold for partitioning available water for condensation, and indeed we find significant correlation between GS cloud water and SGS supersaturation. However, we also find that the assumption of a static threshold of 100% saturation to be unrealistic. Empirical calculations from the ARISE data show a large sensitivity of this threshold to GS relative humidity, and so a microphysical parameterization allowing the threshold to vary according to GS thermodynamic properties may result in more realistic GS cloud water values. Finally, to determine how sensitive the ARISE-derived results are to that particular campaign, we include additional data from the First International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) Regional Experiment (FIRE)–Arctic Cloud Experiment (ACE) conducted in 1998. The inclusion of the second dataset will help with demonstrating the robustness of the results and their utility in improving the representation of Arctic clouds in models and reanalyses.

J Brant Dodson↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Generation of Merged Radar-Lidar Data Products during the IMPACTS 2020 Field Campaign

A novel, composite lidar and radar data products was created using lidar and radar data products generated from the NASA ER-2 aircraft during the NASA IMPACTS 2020 field campaign. This product is intended to supplement the raw data sources, tease out additional aspects of the mechanisms underpinning wintertime cyclones, and enhance our understanding of microphysical properties in sensor overlap regions. Initial combined products focused on generating normalized fields of ER-2 based radar and lidar data to provide a more comprehensive visualization of storm structure (precipitation bands, cloud tops, melting levels, etc.) Ongoing work has focused on developing a combined radar-lidar reflectivity product and deriving hydrometeor particle properties (type, orientation, etc.) using ER-2-based depolarization data. To validate these hydrometeor properties, we leverage coincident overpasses of the high-altitude ER-2 aircraft with the suite of cloud particle probes on the in-situ P-3 aircraft during coincident flight overpasses. This work aims to provide vital information to help IMPACTS achieve its mission goal of improving microphysical properties retrievals from airborne and spaceborne platforms for these high-impact winter storm events.

Stephen D Nicholls↗

NASA NTRS2015

IPRT Polarized Radiative Transfer Model Intercomparison Project-Phase A

The polarization state of electromagnetic radiation scattered by atmospheric particles such as aerosols, cloud droplets, or ice crystals contains much more information about the optical and microphysical properties than the total intensity alone. For this reason an increasing number of polarimetric observations are performed from space, from the ground and from aircraft. Polarized radiative transfer models are required to interpret and analyse these measurements and to develop retrieval algorithms exploiting polarimetric observations. In the last years a large number of new codes have been developed, mostly for specific applications. Benchmark results are available for specific cases, but not for more sophisticated scenarios including polarized surface reflection and multi-layer atmospheres. The International Polarized Radiative Transfer (IPRT) working group of the International Radiation Commission (IRC) has initiated a model intercomparison project in order to fill this gap. This paper presents the results of the first phase A of the IPRT project which includes ten test cases, from simple setups with only one layer and Rayleigh scattering to rather sophisticated setups with a cloud embedded in a standard atmosphere above an ocean surface. All scenarios in the first phase A of the intercomparison project are for a one-dimensional plane-parallel model geometry. The commonly established benchmark results are available at the IPRT website

radiative transfer↗

NASA NTRS2009

Water Vapor, Temperature, and Ice Particles in Polar Mesosphere as Measured by SABER/TIMED and OSIRIS/Odin Instruments

Although many new details on the properties of mesospheric ice particles that farm Polar Mesospheric Clouds (PMCs) and also cause polar mesospheric summer echoes have been recently revealed, certain aspects of mesospheric ice microphysics and dynamics still remain open. The detailed relation between PMC parameters and properties of their environment, as well as interseasonal and interhemispheric differences and trends in PMC properties that are possibly related to global change, are among those open questions. In this work, mesospheric temperature and water vapor concentration measured by the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument on board the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite are used to study the properties of PMCs with respect to the surrounding atmosphere. The cloud parameters, namely location, brightness, and altitude, are obtained from the observations made by the Optical Spectrograph and Infrared Imager System (OSIRIS) on the Odin satellite. About a thousand of simultaneous common volume measurements made by SABER and OSIRIS in both hemispheres from 2002 until 2008 are used. The correlation between PMC brightness (and occurrence rate) and temperatures at PMC altitudes and at the mesopause is analysed. The relation between PMC parameters, frost point temperature, and gaseous water vapor content in and below the cloud is also discussed. Interseasonal and interhemispheric differences and trends in the above parameters, as well as in PMC peak altitudes and mesopause altitudes are evaluated.

Feofilov, A. G.↗

NASA NTRS2019

Laboratory Investigations of Cloud Particle Formation and Sublimation on Titan, Mars, and Earth

Microphysical modeling of cloud formation and growth relies on fundamental measurements of the properties of condensable gases which form cloud particles. NASA's Ames Chemistry Laboratory has the capability to measure vapor pressures and heterogeneous nucleation conditions for a variety of gases found in the atmospheres of solar system bodies. Highlights from work for Earth, Mars, and Titan demonstrate the range of conditions and atmospheres studied to date.

Iraci, Laura T.↗

NASA NTRS2011

NASA's Integrated Instrument Simulator Suite for Atmospheric Remote Sensing from Spaceborne Platforms (ISSARS) and Its Role for the ACE and GPM Missions

Forward simulation is an indispensable tool for evaluation of precipitation retrieval algorithms as well as for studying snow/ice microphysics and their radiative properties. The main challenge of the implementation arises due to the size of the problem domain. To overcome this hurdle, assumptions need to be made to simplify compiles cloud microphysics. It is important that these assumptions are applied consistently throughout the simulation process. ISSARS addresses this issue by providing a computationally efficient and modular framework that can integrate currently existing models and is also capable of expanding for future development. ISSARS is designed to accommodate the simulation needs of the Aerosol/Clouds/Ecosystems (ACE) mission and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission: radars, microwave radiometers, and optical instruments such as lidars and polarimeter. ISSARS's computation is performed in three stages: input reconditioning (IRM), electromagnetic properties (scattering/emission/absorption) calculation (SEAM), and instrument simulation (ISM). The computation is implemented as a web service while its configuration can be accessed through a web-based interface.

real-aperture instruments↗

NASA NTRS2002

Theoretical Studies of Microphysics of Marine Boundary-Layer Clouds

This project is aimed at better understanding the role that aerosols play in altering the properties of stratus clouds. This interaction, termed the indirect effect of aerosols on climate, is a major subject a of study since the radiative forcing involved may rival that of greenhouse gases, but may be of the opposite sign. Our goal was to create numerical models of the phenomena, test them with data, and thereby gain insight into the physical processes occurring. Below we list the papers that we have produced during this grant. We then discuss these papers.

Toon, Owen B.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Improving the Representation of Snow Crystal Properties Within a Single-Moment Microphysics Scheme

As computational resources continue their expansion, weather forecast models are transitioning to the use of parameterizations that predict the evolution of hydrometeors and their microphysical processes, rather than estimating the bulk effects of clouds and precipitation that occur on a sub-grid scale. These parameterizations are referred to as single-moment, bulk water microphysics schemes, as they predict the total water mass among hydrometeors in a limited number of classes. Although the development of single moment microphysics schemes have often been driven by the need to predict the structure of convective storms, they may also provide value in predicting accumulations of snowfall. Predicting the accumulation of snowfall presents unique challenges to forecasters and microphysics schemes. In cases where surface temperatures are near freezing, accumulated depth often depends upon the snowfall rate and the ability to overcome an initial warm layer. Precipitation efficiency relates to the dominant ice crystal habit, as dendrites and plates have relatively large surface areas for the accretion of cloud water and ice, but are only favored within a narrow range of ice supersaturation and temperature. Forecast models and their parameterizations must accurately represent the characteristics of snow crystal populations, such as their size distribution, bulk density and fall speed. These properties relate to the vertical distribution of ice within simulated clouds, the temperature profile through latent heat release, and the eventual precipitation rate measured at the surface. The NASA Goddard, single-moment microphysics scheme is available to the operational forecast community as an option within the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The NASA Goddard scheme predicts the occurrence of up to six classes of water mass: vapor, cloud ice, cloud water, rain, snow and either graupel or hail.

Molthan, Andrew L.↗

NASA NTRS2005

CRYSTAL-FACE Polarization Lidar Research

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Polarization Diversity Lidar (PDL, Sassen 1994) participated in the July 2002 CRYSTAL-FACE field campaign, shortly after the PI moved from the University of Utah to UAF. The truck-mounted PDL is an advanced dual wavelength (1.06 and 0.532 micron), high resolution (0.1-s by 1.5-m), scanning lidar system designed as a testbed for evaluating laser backscatter depolarization techniques for the study of clouds and aerosols in the atmosphere. The main goals identified in our proposal for the CRYSTAL-FACE experiment were, i) the characterization of Florida thunderstorm anvil macrophysical and microphysical properties from lidar backscattering and depolarization, ii) the study of thin to subvisual tropopause-topped subtropical cirrus, iii) the search for indirect cloud effects of trans- Atlantic advected Saharan dust storm aerosols on clouds, and iv) the investigation of melting layer effects on lidar and multi-wavelength Doppler radar measurements in precipitation. Although we experienced adversity in the field during the campaign, sufficient data was collected to begin addressing these topics, and several conference presentations, three journal articles, and one book chapter have resulted from the data analysis effort supported by this grant. (PDL operations were delayed by FAA concerns over the initial sighting at the Kendall-Tamiami Airport, and a brief but major laser breakdown was experienced during the re- setup at the remote Ochopee Everglades site that also supported the N-POL radar.) All lidar data collected by the PDL system were processed and quality checked, and submitted to the CRYSTAL-FACE data archive in a timely manner.

Sassen, Kenneth↗

NASA NTRS2018

Radiative Heating Profiles over Ascension Island during the 2016 and 2017 Biomass Burning Seasons

Marine boundary layer clouds, including the transition from stratocumulus to cumulus, are poorly represented in numerical weather prediction and general circulation models. In many cases, the complex physical relationships between cloud morphology and the environmental conditions in which marine boundary layer clouds exist are not well understood. Such uncertainties arise in the presence of biomass burning carbonaceous aerosol, as is the case over the southeast Atlantic Ocean, where it is likely that the absorbing and heating properties of these aerosols modify the microphysical composition and macrophysical arrangement of marine stratocumulus and trade cumulus. The deployment of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Mobile Facility #1 (AMF1) in support of LASIC (Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds) provided a unique opportunity to observe thermodynamic, cloud and aerosol properties during two consecutive biomass burning seasons from July through October of 2016 and 2017 over Ascension Island (7.96 S, 14.35 W). These observations in conjunction with radiation transfer modeling were used to assess the impact of biomass burning carbonaceous aerosol plumes as they passed over the site.Thermodynamic profiles were generated using a combination of radiosonde data and thermodynamic profilers to provide high temporal resolution profiles of quantities that are important for cloud development, such as CAPE and CIN. Coincident Ka-band radar and lidar profiles were used to characterize the cloud and sub-cloud structure. The resulting thermodynamic and cloud profiles are used as input forcing for the Rapid Radiative Transfer Model (RRTM) to compute radiative heating profiles over the observation site. Idealized experiments using RRTM, with and without aerosols present, are used to assess the impacts of the absorbing aerosol on the heating rate profiles.

Cumulus↗

NASA NTRS2019

Analysis of the Global Microwave Polarization Data of Clouds

Two NASA microwave radiometers, the satellite-borne GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement) Microwave Imager (GMI) and the aircraft-borne CoSMIR (the Conical Scanning Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer), measure vertically- and horizontally-polarized microwaves emitted by cloud particles and the Earth below, providing unique information on ice crystal properties in clouds. Their data reveal that non-spherical ice crystals are common and they fall in a preferred horizontally aligned orientation in convective and optically thick clouds especially near cloud top. A bin (particle-size-resolving) microphysical model with an ice crystal shape representation is developed to simulate the evolution of ice crystal properties (i.e., size, shape and orientation), where the radiation effect on microphysics (REM) is taken into account. Since REM represents the effect of all (e.g., both infrared and solar) radiation on ice crystal temperature, it relies upon the ice crystal proprieties that determine how an ice crystal receives radiation. Definitely, REM is different from the radiative effects that cause sensitivity at the microwave frequencies in the GPM and CoSMIR observations. Model results show that horizontally-oriented ice crystals grow faster than vertically-oriented (or spherical) ones due to REM. When both horizontally- and vertically-oriented ice crystals coexist in an air parcel, the model results show that the former grow by vapor deposition whereas the latter shrink by sublimation and disappear eventually. These modeling results are supported by the GMI data and the CoSMIR observations from MC3E (Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment) and OLYMPEX (Olympic Mountains Experiment) on the prevalence of horizontally-oriented ice crystals. Moreover, the REM-induced precipitation explains the CloudSat observations of rare thin clouds in the tropical mid-troposphere as well as the common diamond dust in the high latitudes.

Xiping Zeng↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Polarized Observations of Falling Snow from IMPACTS

The polarization of electromagnetic waves (radio waves and light) provides useful information on the dynamics and structure of precipitating storms. Polarization results from aligned precipitation particles interacting with the electromagnetic waves. This orientation is related to the dynamics of the weather system, and the orientation effects the radiative properties of the clouds (which is related to climate sensivity and feedbacks). We use observations from the Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Storms (IMPACTS), a NASA field campaign aiming to understand winter storms that regularly impact the East Coast of the United States, to understand the relationship between properties of snowstorms and polarization of millimeter waves (89 GHz and 166 GHz). We see that height and intensity are strong indicators of the polarization signatures observed in these systems.

Ian S Adams↗

NASA NTRS2017

Microphysical Properties of Snow and Their Link to Ze-S Relations During BAECC 2014

This study uses snow events from the Biogenic Aerosols-Effects on Clouds and Climate (BAECC) 2014 campaign to investigate the connection between properties of snow and radar observations. The general hydrodynamic theory is applied to video-disdrometer measurements to retrieve masses of falling ice particles. Errors associated with the observation geometry and the measured particle size distribution (PSD) are addressed by devising a simple correction procedure. The value of the correction factor is determined by comparison of the retrieved precipitation accumulation with weighing-gauge measurements. Derived mass-dimensional relations are represented in the power-law form m = amDbm. It is shown that the retrieved prefactor am and exponent bm react to changes in prevailing microphysical processes. From the derived microphysical properties, event-specific relations between the equivalent reflectivity factor Ze and snowfall precipitation rate S (Ze = 5 azsSbzs ) are determined. For the studied events, the prefactor of the Ze-S relation varied between 53 and 782 and the exponent was in the range of 1.19-1.61. The dependence of the factors azs and bzs on the m(D) relation and PSD are investigated. The exponent of the Ze-S relation mainly depends on the exponent of the m(D) relation, whereas the prefactor azs depends on both the intercept parameterN0 of the PSDand the prefactors of them(D) andy(D) relations. Changes in azs for a given N0 are shown to be linked to changes in liquid water path, which can be considered to be a proxy for degree of riming.

von Lerber, Annakaisa↗

NASA NTRS2021

3D Cloud Tomography and Droplet Size Retrieval from Multi-Angle Polarimetric Imaging of Scattered Sunlight from Above

Tomography aims to recover a three-dimensional (3D) density map of a medium or an object. In medical imaging,it is extensively used for diagnostics via X-ray computed tomography (CT). We define and derive a tomographyof cloud droplet distributions via passive remote sensing. We use multi-view polarimetric images to fit a 3Dpolarized radiative transfer (RT) forward model. Our motivation is 3D volumetric probing of vertically-developedconvectively-driven clouds that are ill-served by current methods in operational passive remote sensing. Currenttechniques are indeed based on strictly 1D RT modeling and applied to a single cloudy pixel, where cloud geometrydefaults to that of a plane-parallel slab. Incident unpolarized sunlight, once scattered by cloud droplets, changesits polarization state according to droplet size. Therefore, polarimetric measurements in the rainbow and gloryangular regions can be used to infer the droplet size distribution. This work defines and derives a framework for afull 3D tomography of cloud droplets for both their mass concentration in space and their distribution across arange of sizes. This gridded 3D retrieval of key microphysical properties is made tractable by our novel approachthat involves a restructuring and partial linearization of an open-source polarized 3D RT code to accommodate aspecial two-step iterative optimization technique. Physically-realistic synthetic clouds are used to demonstrate themethodology with rigorous uncertainty quantification, while a real-world cloud imaged by AirMSPI is processedto illustrate the new remote sensing capability

Schechner, Yoav Y.↗