Application of ultraviolet reflectivity measurements from Nimbus-7 to determine cloud amountA technique is described that uses scene reflectivity derived from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) measurements from aboard the Nimbus-7 satellite to improve the estimation of cloud amounts from the data taken by the Temperature Humidity IR Radiometer (THIR) onboard the same satellite. TOMS operates in six 1 nm wide spectral bands in the UV (380, 360, 340, 331, 318, and 313 nm) and provides information for inference of directional albedos. Moreover, the features of the TOMS images are paralleled with those obtained by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GEOS) visible images. It is noted that by use of such a multisensor approach relatively thin or broken low clouds (below 2 km) can be detected with an rms error of about 10 percent when compared to the GOES visible and IR images.
Document ID
19850050719
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Bhartia, P. K. (Systems and Applied Sciences Corp. Hyattsville, MD, United States)
Eck, T. F. (Systems and Applied Sciences Corp. Hyattsville, MD, United States)
Hwang, P. H. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences, Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Stowe, L. L. (NOAA, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, Washington DC, United States)