precipitation intensity and cloud physics
DESCRIPTION
Precipitation Intensity and Cloud Physics. Brad Eck April 26, 2007. Data Sources. Precipitation Intensity North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) netCDF (thanks to Cedric) Units: kg/m^2/s mm/s Cloud Physics Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Optical Thickness. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Precipitation Intensityand
Cloud Physics
Brad Eck
April 26, 2007
Data Sources
• Precipitation Intensity– North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR)– netCDF (thanks to Cedric)– Units: kg/m^2/s mm/s
• Cloud Physics– Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer
(MODIS)– Optical Thickness
Optical Thickness
• “…a measure of how opaque a medium is to radiation passing through it.” http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/OpticalDepth.html
• “The (dimensionless) line integral of the absorption coefficient…along any path in a … medium.” http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?id=optical-thickness1
0
zzK
d
Source: King et. al., “Remote sensing of cloud, aerosol, and water vapor properties from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS),” IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. 30, 2-27 (1992).
Sprechen Sie Englisch?
• Optical thickness combines droplet size, water content and cloud height to give a normalized cloud size
• Bigger clouds should have a higher precipitation intensity
May 2006