PNNL

Abstract

Visible/infrared imagery from passive satellites is commonly relied upon to study low cloud microphysics over oceanic regions, including for the Southern Ocean (SO), but relatively little validation has been undertaken for the SO. In this article, we compare low-cloud effective radius (re), cloud droplet number concentration (Nd) and cloud liquid water path (LWP) retrievals from the NASA Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) with surface measurements collected during the Macquarie Island Cloud and Radiation Experiment (MICRE). MODIS 3.7-µm band retrievals show little bias and moderately good correlation relative to MICRE retrievals for liquid-phase low clouds when restricted to Solar Zenith Angles