Detecting Supercooled Water Clouds Using Passive Radiometer Measurements

Supercooled water clouds (SWCs) have significant impacts on the Earth's radiation balance, aircraft ice accretion and precipitation augmentation. This study introduces an efficient algorithm to detect SWCs from passive radiometers, which combines information from the reflectance difference between 1.61 and 2.25 mu m channels, the brightness temperature difference between the 8.5 and 11 mu m channels, and the cloud top temperature. Validated by space radar and lidar measurements, our algorithm can correctly detect 91% of SWC pixels, better than current Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite operational product. SWCs are found mostly over the mid- to high-latitude oceans and have a global occurrence frequency of similar to 8% in cloudy skies. Since the channels used for the detection are available in most current operational polar and geostationary satellite radiometers, this SWC detection algorithm can be easily implemented for operations such as cloud monitoring, aviation safety, and SWC-related weather modification.