Airborne validation of radiative transfer modelling of ice clouds at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths

Fox, Stuart; Mendrok, Jana; Eriksson, Patrick; Ekelund, Robin; O'Shea, Sebastian J.; Bower, Keith N.; Baran, Anthony J.; Harlow, R. Chawn; Pickering, Juliet C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-1599-2019

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-1599-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-1599-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

Research article

|

12 Mar 2019

Research article |

| 12 Mar 2019

Airborne validation of radiative transfer modelling of ice clouds at millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelengths

Stuart Fox, Jana Mendrok, Patrick Eriksson, Robin Ekelund, Sebastian J. O'Shea, Keith N. Bower, Anthony J. Baran, R. Chawn Harlow, and Juliet C. Pickering

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-1599-2019-supplement

Data sets

ARTS Microwave Single Scattering Properties Database R. Ekelund, M. Brath,J. Mendrok, and P. Eriksson https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1175573

ARTS Microwave Single Scattering Properties Database Interfaces J. Mendrok, P. Eriksson, R. Ekelund, and M. Brath https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1175589

FAAM B895 CIRCCREX and ISMAR flight: Airborne atmospheric measurements from core and non-core instrument suites on board the BAE-146 aircraft Met Office http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/6ba397d6c8854da19bcced8ea588c1f9

FAAM B895 CIRCCREX and ISMAR flight: Airborne atmospheric measurements from core and non-core instrument suites on board the BAE-146 aircraft Met Office http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/dcc9dc73d8bc44caa51f5e8641f2c212

Model code and software

ARTS, the Atmospheric Radiative Transfer Simulator - version 2.2, the planetary toolbox edition S. A. Buehler, J. Mendrok, P. Eriksson, A. Perrin, R. Larsson, and O. Lemke https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-1537-2018

Short summary

Airborne observations of ice clouds are used to validate radiative transfer simulations using a state-of-the-art database of cloud ice optical properties. Simulations at these wavelengths are required to make use of future satellite instruments such as the Ice Cloud Imager. We show that they can generally reproduce observed cloud signals, but for a given total ice mass there is considerable sensitivity to the cloud microphysics, including the particle shape and distribution of ice mass.