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Detailed Reference Information
Huang et al. 2006
Huang, J., Minnis, P., Lin, B., Yi, Y., Fan, T.-F., Sun-Mack, S. and Ayers, J.K. (2006). Determination of ice water path in ice-over-water cloud systems using combined MODIS and AMSR-E measurements. Geophysical Research Letters 33: doi: 10.1029/2006GL027038. issn: 0094-8276.

To provide more accurate ice cloud microphysical properties, the multi-layered cloud retrieval system (MCRS) is used to retrieve ice water path (IWP) in ice-over-water cloud systems globally over oceans using combined instrument data from Aqua. The liquid water path (LWP) of lower-layer water clouds is estimated from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) measurements. The properties of the upper-level ice clouds are then derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements by matching simulated radiances from a two-cloud-layer radiative transfer model. The results show that the MCRS can significantly improve the accuracy and reduce the over-estimation of optical depth and IWP retrievals for ice-over-water cloud systems. The mean daytime ice cloud optical depth and IWP for overlapped ice-over-water clouds over oceans from Aqua are 7.6 and 146.4 gm-2, respectively, down from the initial single-layer retrievals of 17.3 and 322.3 gm-2. The mean IWP for actual single-layer clouds is 128.2 gm-2.

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Abstract

Keywords
Atmospheric Composition and Structure, Cloud physics and chemistry, Global Change, Climate dynamics (0429, 3309), Atmospheric Processes, Radiative processes
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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