Product Validation

The Clouds from AVHRR Extended (CLAVR-x) System is primarily used to perform cloud retrievals from geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites, as shown here. In order to evaluate how well the cloud retrievals are working across the myriad of sensors, three main validation efforts are being conducted. The first is identifying and quantifying product artifacts due to discontinuities from viewing angles, solar angles, and bad data. For this effort, a dashboard has been developed that allows us to identify the gradients across the seams of the different geostationary satellites (see figure). The second effort is using global ground based radar-lidar sites for evaluation. These include CloudNet and the Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) to evaluate cloud vertical structure. The last effort is to utilize data from the joint mission from the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency named EarthCare. This will enable global evaluations of cloud structures from space borne radar and lidar data.

Goal:

• To demonstrate our ability to quantify cloud vertical structures from passive sensors.

Figure: Example Validation Dashboard plot to assist in validating the blending routines. The plot shows cloud-top-heights, cloud-base-heights, and edge detection and means across these fields with colors marking each satellite source so discontinuities can be identified.