Journal
ATMOSPHERIC MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES
Volume 11, Issue 6, Pages 3373-3396Publisher
COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH
DOI: 10.5194/amt-11-3373-2018
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Funding
- European Space Agency through the Cloud_cci project [4000109870/13/I-NB]
- NERC [nceo020006, nceo020003] Funding Source: UKRI
- Natural Environment Research Council [nceo020006, nceo020003] Funding Source: researchfish
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We present here the key features of the Community Cloud retrieval for CLimate (CC4CL) processing algorithm. We focus on the novel features of the framework: the optimal estimation approach in general, explicit uncertainty quantification through rigorous propagation of all known error sources into the final product, and the consistency of our long-term, multi-platform time series provided at various resolutions, from 0.5 to 0.02 degrees. By describing all key input data and processing steps, we aim to inform the user about important features of this new retrieval framework and its potential applicability to climate studies. We provide an overview of the retrieved and derived output variables. These are analysed for four, partly very challenging, scenes collocated with CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) observations in the high latitudes and over the Gulf of Guinea-West Africa. The results show that CC4CL provides very realistic estimates of cloud top height and cover for optically thick clouds but, where optically thin clouds overlap, returns a height between the two layers. CC4CL is a unique, coherent, multi-instrument cloud property retrieval framework applicable to passive sensor data of several EO missions. Through its flexibility, CC4CL offers the opportunity for combining a variety of historic and current EO missions into one dataset, which, compared to single sensor retrievals, is improved in terms of accuracy and temporal sampling.
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