April 16 HIS CLOUD EMISSIVITY QUICKLOOK

HIS Cloud Emissivity Examples for the April 16, 1996 SUCCESS FLIGHT

This figure shows HIS derived cloud emissivity and their respective brightness temperature spectra obtained from ER 2 on April 16,1996. Many different cloud spectral features are detected from these high spectral resolution infrared measurements. At 2104Z, very transparent cirrus cloud identified by lidar with cloud altitude pressure 250 mb, the average derived cloud emissivity in the infrared window region (10-12.5 micron) is 0.22. At other time periods, less transparent clouds shown from HIS brightness temperature spectra and their mean emissivities are 0.4, 0.65 and 0.9, respectively. Moreover, these cloud emissivity spectra exhibits very different spectral characteristics that are strongly related to cloud microphysical properties of natural and anthropogenic clouds.

If question contact Allen Huang/ allenh@ssec.wisc.edu