Aircraft evaluation of MODIS cloud drop number concentration retrievals

Passer, Scarlet R.; Witte, Mikael K.; Chuang, Patrick Y.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-3819-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-3819-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-3819-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 15

Research article

|

13 Aug 2025

Research article |

| 13 Aug 2025

Aircraft evaluation of MODIS cloud drop number concentration retrievals

Scarlet R. Passer, Mikael K. Witte, and Patrick Y. Chuang

Data sets

POST: Physics of Stratocumulus Top (POST) UCAR/NCAR - Earth Observing Laboratory (EOL) https://data.eol.ucar.edu/project/96

MYD06_L2 - MODIS/Aqua Clouds 5-Min L2 Swath 1km and 5km Steven Platnick et al. http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD06_L2.061

MOD06_L2 - MODIS/Terra Clouds 5-Min L2 Swath 1km and 5km Steven Platnick et al. http://dx.doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD06_L2.061

MASE cabin and cloud probe data Mikael Witte https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1035928

Short summary

One important property of a cloud is the concentration of cloud drops. This property is relevant to how the cloud interacts with sunlight and how easily the cloud forms precipitation. Measuring this property from satellite observations is one important source of data, but it does require making some assumptions. This study evaluates the accuracy of satellite-derived drop concentration by a comparison with aircraft measurements.