Using ABI to help HES for cloud property and atmospheric sounding retrieval

The Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and the Hyperspectral Environmental Suite (HES) on GOES-R and beyond will enable improved monitoring of the distribution and evolution of atmospheric thermodynamics and clouds. The HES will be able to provide hourly atmospheric soundings with spatial resolution of 4 ~ 10 km with high accuracy using its high spectral resolution measurements. However, presence of clouds affects the sounding retrieval and needs to be dealt with properly. The ABI is able to provide at high spatial resolution (0.5 ~ 2km) a cloud mask, surface and cloud types, cloud phase mask, cloud top pressure (CTP), cloud particle size (CPS), and cloud optical thickness (COT), etc. The combined ABI/HES system offers the opportunity for atmospheric and cloud products improved over those possible from either system alone. The key step for synergistic use of ABI/HES radiance measurements is the collocation in space and time. Collocated ABI can (1) provide HES sub-pixel cloud characterization (mask, amount, phase, layer information, etc.) within the HES footprint; (2) be used for HES cloudclearing for partly cloudy HES footprints; (3) provide background information in variational retrieval of cloud properties with HES cloudy radiances. The Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) measurements from the Earth Observing System's (EOS) Aqua satellite provide the opportunity to study the synergistic use of advanced imager and sounder measurements. The combined MODIS and AIRS data for various scenes are analyzed to study the utility of synergistic use of ABI products and HES radiances for better retrieving atmospheric soundings and cloud properties. In order to derive sounding from combined ABI and HES radiances under HES partly cloudy footprint where no microwave sounding unit is available, an optimal cloud-removal or cloud-clearing algorithm is developed. MODIS and AIRS are used to verify the algorithm. AIRS clear column radiances are retrieved from the combined MODIS IR clear radiances and the AIRS cloudy radiances on a single footprint basis. The AIRS cloud-removed or cloudcleared radiance spectrum is convoluted to all the MODIS IR spectral bands with spectral response functions (SRFs), and the convoluted brightness temperatures (BTs) are compared with MODIS clear BT observations within all successful cloud-cleared footprints. The bias and the standard deviation between the convoluted BTs and MODIS clear BT observations is less than 0.25 K and 0.5 K, respectively, over both water and land for most MODIS IR spectral bands. The AIRS cloud-cleared BT spectrum is also compared with its nearby clear BT spectrum, the difference, accounting the effects due to scene non- uniformity, is reasonable according the analysis. It is found that more than 30% of the AIRS cloudy (partly and overcast) footprints in this study have been successfully cloud-cleared using the optimal cloud-clearing method, revealing the potential application of this method on the operational processing of hyperspectral IR sounder cloudy radiance measurements when the collocated imager IR data is available.