A spectral method for discriminating thermodynamic phase and retrieving cloud optical thickness and effective radius using transmitted solar radiance spectra

Abstract

Cloud properties are obtained via transmitted light that has interacted with cloud particles throughout its vertical extent. To achieve this, we introduce a new retrieval based on spectrally resolved measurements. We used 15 parameters to quantify spectral features in transmitted light modulated by cloud optical thickness, effective radius, and thermodynamic phase. When applied to ground-based measurements, this method results in a closer match to measured spectra than two other methods.

Publication
in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques