EGU21-8502
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8502
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Towards a continuous NASA cloud climate data record from MODIS to VIIRS

Kerry Meyer1, Steven Platnick1, Robert Holz2, Steven Ackerman2, Andrew Heidinger3, Nandana Amarasinghe4, Galina Wind4, Richard Frey2, and Steve Dutcher2
Kerry Meyer et al.
  • 1NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, United States of America
  • 2SSEC, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, United States of America
  • 3NOAA NESDIS/STAR, Madison, United States of America
  • 4SSAI, Lanham, United States of America

The Suomi NPP and JPSS series VIIRS imagers provide an opportunity to extend the NASA EOS Terra (20+ year) and Aqua (18+ year) MODIS cloud climate data record into the new generation NOAA operational weather satellite era. However, while building a consistent, long-term cloud data record has proven challenging for the two MODIS sensors alone, the transition to VIIRS presents additional challenges due to its lack of key water vapor and CO2 absorbing channels available on MODIS that are used for high cloud detection and cloud-top property retrievals, and a mismatch in the spectral location of the 2.2µm shortwave infrared channels on MODIS and VIIRS that has important implications on inter-sensor consistency of cloud optical/microphysical property retrievals and cloud thermodynamic phase. Moreover, sampling differences between MODIS and VIIRS, including spatial resolution and local observation time, and inter-sensor relative radiometric calibration pose additional challenges. To create a continuous, long-term cloud climate data record that merges the observational records of MODIS and VIIRS while mitigating the impacts of these sensor differences, a common algorithm approach was pursued that utilizes a subset of spectral channels available on each imager. The resulting NASA CLDMSK (cloud mask) and CLDPROP (cloud-top and optical/microphysical properties) products were publicly released for Aqua MODIS and SNPP VIIRS in early 2020, with NOAA-20 (JPSS-1) VIIRS following in early 2021. Here, we present an overview of the MODIS-VIIRS CLDMSK and CLDPROP common algorithm approach, discuss efforts to monitor and address relative radiometric calibration differences, and highlight early analysis of inter-sensor cloud product dataset continuity.

How to cite: Meyer, K., Platnick, S., Holz, R., Ackerman, S., Heidinger, A., Amarasinghe, N., Wind, G., Frey, R., and Dutcher, S.: Towards a continuous NASA cloud climate data record from MODIS to VIIRS, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8502, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8502, 2021.

Corresponding displays formerly uploaded have been withdrawn.