In this paper, we present the retrieval of midlatitude ice, liquid water and mixed-phase cloud parameters from the longwave downwelling spectral radiance measured with the Far-Infrared Radiation Mobile Observation System (FIRMOS) spectrometer. FIRMOS, developed within an ESA Project for the preparation of the FORUM mission, was installed for 2 months (December 2018 and January-February 2019) at the Alpine observatory of Mt. Zugspitze, in the South of Germany, at about 3000 m a.s.l. The contemporary availability of a backscattering Lidar, located at the Schneefernerhaus Station, 300 m below the Zugspitze summit, allowed to constrain the cloud position in the radiative transfer model and to retrieve optical depths, phase and cloud microphysics with improved accuracy. A good agreement is found between the optical depth values obtained from the Lidar and those from radiance measurements.
Retrieval of midlatitude cloud properties from FIRMOS downwelling spectral radiance
Gianluca Di Natale;Luca Palchetti;Giovanni Bianchini;Claudio Belotti;Silvia Viciani;Francesco D'Amato;Marco Barucci;Alessio Montori;Marco Gai;Samuele Del Bianco;
2020
Abstract
In this paper, we present the retrieval of midlatitude ice, liquid water and mixed-phase cloud parameters from the longwave downwelling spectral radiance measured with the Far-Infrared Radiation Mobile Observation System (FIRMOS) spectrometer. FIRMOS, developed within an ESA Project for the preparation of the FORUM mission, was installed for 2 months (December 2018 and January-February 2019) at the Alpine observatory of Mt. Zugspitze, in the South of Germany, at about 3000 m a.s.l. The contemporary availability of a backscattering Lidar, located at the Schneefernerhaus Station, 300 m below the Zugspitze summit, allowed to constrain the cloud position in the radiative transfer model and to retrieve optical depths, phase and cloud microphysics with improved accuracy. A good agreement is found between the optical depth values obtained from the Lidar and those from radiance measurements.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
