Cloud Observations From Eos-Terra: From Conception to Interpretation of Cloud Climatologies With a Focus on Small Clouds

Zhao, Guangyu

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Description

Title

Cloud Observations From Eos-Terra: From Conception to Interpretation of Cloud Climatologies With a Focus on Small Clouds

Author(s)

Zhao, Guangyu

Issue Date

2006

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Di Girolamo, Larry

Department of Study

Atmospheric Sciences

Discipline

Atmospheric Sciences

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Physics, Atmospheric Science

Language

eng

Abstract

Global comparison between the MISR and MODIS cloud masks shows large discrepancies over regions dominated by small clouds. This discrepancy was further explored using an ASTER dataset at 15m resolution over the tropical western Atlantic. On average, MODIS and MISR overestimate cloud fraction by 18% and 36%, essentially making their cloud cover climatologies for this cloud type useless. Variations of spatial distribution of clouds cause large rms errors in the overestimated cloud fraction, suggesting that it may be difficult to decouple trends in cloud fraction from satellites from true changes in the spatial distribution of clouds. The shortcoming in the cloud climatology from these datasets was addressed by using the high-resolution ASTER. With ASTER, this thesis provides the most comprehensive examination to date of trade wind cumuli macrophysical properties. The results show large deviations from past studies, and will have a direct impact on models attempting to simulate trade wind cumuli.

Graduation Semester

2006

Type of Resource

text

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