Comparing Airborne and Satellite Retrievals of Optical and Microphysical Properties of Cirrus and Deep Convective Clouds using a Radiance Ratio Technique

Solar radiation reflected by cirrus and deep convective clouds (DCCs) was measured by the Spectral Modular Airborne Radiation Measurement System (SMART) installed on the German HALO (High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft) during the ML-CIRRUS and the ACRIDICON-CHUVA campaigns. In particular flights, HALO performed closely collocated measurements with overpasses of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board of Aqua satellite. Based on the nadir upward radiance, the optical thickness τ and bulk particle effective radius r eff of cirrus and DCC are retrieved using a radiance ratio algorithm which considers the cloud thermodynamic phase, the cloud vertical profile, multi layer clouds, and heterogeneity of the surface albedo. For the cirrus case, the comparison of τ ci and r eff,ci retrieved on the basis of SMART and MODIS upward radiances yields a normalized mean absolute deviation of 0.5 % for τ ci and 2.5 % for r eff,ci . While for the DCC case, the respective deviation is 5.9 % for τ dcc and 13.2 % for r eff,dcc . The larger deviations in case of DCC are mainly attributed to the fast cloud evolution and three-dimensional radiative effects. Measurements of spectral radiance at near-infrared wavelengths with different absorption by cloud particles are employed to investigate the vertical profile of cirrus effective radius. The retrieved values of cirrus effective radius are further compared with corresponding in situ measurements using a vertical weighting method. Compared to the MODIS observation, spectral measurements of SMART provide an increased amount of information on the vertical distribution of particle sizes at cloud top, and therefore allow to reconstruct the profile of effective radius at cloud top. The retrieved effective radius differs to in situ measurements with a normalized mean absolute deviation between 4–19 %, depending on the wavelength chosen in the retrieval algorithm. While, the MODIS cloud product underestimates the in situ measurements by 48 %. The presence of liquid water clouds below the cirrus, the variability of particle size distributions, and the simplification in the retrieval algorithm assuming vertically homogeneous cloud are identified as the potential error contributors.