Derivation and Applications of Near-Infrared Cloud Reflectances from GOES-8 and GOES-9

Abstract Recent deployments of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-8 and -9) include full-time 3.9-μm imaging capabilities. This shortwave (near infrared) channel has been available at 3.7 μm on the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument aboard the NOAA polar-orbiting satellite systems. In this spectral region, daytime satellite-observed radiances include contributions from both the reflected solar radiation and the emitted thermal emission. In particular, typical stratus and fog clouds posess near-infrared emissivities less than unity, which requires special processing to account for the angular dependence of the solar reflection. In this paper, a side-by-side comparison of time-coincident GOES- and AVHRR-derived near-infrared cloud reflectance is carried out in order to demonstrate the capability of GOES-8 and -9 in both identifying and characterizing the microphysics of stratus and fog clouds during the...

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