Validation of trade wind cumulus cloud properties derived from meteorological satellites

Trade wind cumulus clouds typically have horizontal sizes of tens of meters to tens of kilometers. Cloud products from MISR and MODIS instruments are available at spatial resolutions varying from 1 km to 5 km. Therefore some of these clouds have been poorly detected and studied. For the duration of the Rain in Cumulus over the Ocean (RICO) experiment, November 2004 - January 2005, data from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is available at 15 meters spatial resolution. We use this data along with a suite of aircraft data available as part of RICO to validate cloud macro-physical properties derived from meteorological satellites.