NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Previous bi-spectral imager retrievals of cloud optical thickness (COT) and effective particle radius (CER) based on the Nakajima and King (1990) approach, such as those of the operational MODIS cloud optical property retrieval product (MOD06), have typically paired a nonabsorbing visible or near-infrared wavelength, sensitive to COT, with an absorbing shortwave or mid-wave infrared wavelength sensitive to CER. However, in practice it is only necessary to select two spectral channels that exhibit a strong contrast in cloud particle absorption. Here it is shown, using eMAS observations obtained during NASA’s SEAC4 RS field campaign, that selecting two absorbing wavelength channels within the broader 1.88 µm water vapor absorption band, namely the 1.83 and 1.93 µm channels that have sufficient differences in ice crystal single scattering albedo, can yield COT and CER retrievals for thin to moderately thick singlelayer cirrus that are reasonably consistent with other solar and IR imager-based and lidar-based retrievals. A distinct advantage of this channel selection for cirrus cloud retrievals is that the below-cloud water vapor absorption minimizes the surface contribution to measured cloudy top-of-atmosphere reflectance, in particular compared to the solar window channels used in heritage retrievals such as MOD06. This reduces retrieval uncertainty resulting from errors in the surface reflectance assumption and reduces the frequency of retrieval failures for thin cirrus clouds.