Sunglint Impact on Atmospheric Soundings from Hyperspectral Resolution Infrared Radiances

The mid-wave infrared band （3-5 #rn） has been widely used for atmospheric soundings. The sunglint impact on the atmospheric parameter retrieval using this band has been neglected because the reflected radiances in this band are significantly less than those in the visible band. In this study, an investigation of sunglint impact on the atmospheric soundings was conducted with Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder ob- servation data from 1 July to 7 July 2007 over the Atlantic Ocean. The impact of sunglint can lead to a brightness temperature increase of 1.0 K for the surface sensitive sounding channels near 4.58 #m. This contamination can indirectly cause a positive bias of 4 g kg-1 in the water vapor retrieval near the ocean surface, and it can be corrected by simply excluding those contaminated channels.

Noise reduction methods in the analysis of near infrared lunar occultation light curves for high angular resolution measurements

A lunar occultation （LO） technique in the near-infrared （NIR） provides angular resolution down to milliarcseconds for an occulted source, even with ground- based 1 m class telescopes. LO observations are limited to brighter objects because they require a high signal-to-noise ratio （S/N ~40） for proper extraction of angular diameter values. Hence, methods to improve the S/N ratio by reducing noise using Fourier and wavelet transforms have been explored in this study. A sample of 54 NIR LO light curves observed with the IR camera at Mt Abu Observatory has been used. It is seen that both Fourier and wavelet methods have shown an improvement in S/N compared to the original data. However, the application of wavelet transforms causes a slight smoothing of the fringes and results in a higher value for angular diameter. Fourier transforms which reduce discrete noise frequencies do not distort the fringe. The Fourier transform method seems to be effective in improving the S/N, as well as improving the model fit, particularly in the fainter regime of our sample. These methods also provide a better model fit for brighter sources in some cases, though there may not be a significant imorovement in S/N.

An Algorithm for Detecting Ice Cloud at Different Altitudes by Combining Dual CrIS Full Spectrum Resolution CO2 Channels

Using infrared sensors to detect ice clouds in different atmospheric layers is still a challenge.The different scattering and absorption properties of longwave and shortwave infrared channels can be utilized to fulfill this purpose.In this study,the release of Suomi-NPP Cross-track Infrared Sounder(Cr IS)full spectrum resolution is used to select and pair channels from longwave(~15μm)and shortwave(~4.3μm)CO2 absorption bands under stricter conditions,so as to better detect ice clouds.Besides,the differences of the weighting function peaks and cloud insensitive level altitudes of the paired channels are both within 50 h Pa so that the variances due to atmospheric conditions can be minimized.The training data of clear sky are determined by Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite(VIIRS)cloud mask product and used to find the linear relationship between the paired longwave and shortwave CO2 absorption channels.From the linear relationship,the so-called cloud emission and scattering index(CESI)is derived to detect ice clouds.CESI clearly captures the center and the ice cloud features of the Super Typhoon Hato located above 415 h Pa.Moreover,the CESI distributions agree with cloud top pressure from the VIIRS in both daytime and nighttime in different atmospheric layers.