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Clouds

Team Lead: Mark Kulie

Product Description

Cloud Mask: Cloud Mask describes the area of the earth's horizontal surface that is masked by the vertical projection of detectable clouds.

Cloud Cover/Layers: Cloud cover is the fraction of a given area of the earth's horizontal surface that is masked by the vertical projection of clouds.

Cloud Top: Cloud top height is defined for each cloud-covered earth location as the set of heights above mean sea level of the tops of the cloud layers overlying the location; Cloud top pressure is defined for each cloud-covered earth location as the set of atmospheric pressures at the tops of the cloud layers overlying the location; Cloud top temperature is defined for each cloud-covered earth location as the set of atmospheric temperature at the tops of the cloud layers overlying the location.

Cloud Base Height: Cloud base height is defined as the height above sea level where cloud bases occur.

Cloud Effective Particle Size: Cloud effective particle size is a representation of the cloud particle size distribution. The effective particle size or effective radius is defined as the ratio of the third moment of the drop size distribution to the second moment, averaged over a layer of air within a cloud.

Cloud Optical Thickness: Cloud Optical Thickness is the optical thickness of the atmosphere due to cloud droplets, per unit cross section, integrated over every distinguishable cloud layer and all distinguishable cloud layers in aggregate, in a vertical column above a horizontal cell on the Earth's surface.

Product and Data Access

Enterprise Cloud Products (Operational: S-NPP: July 5, 2017; NOAA-20: March 7, 2019):

• Enterprise Cloud Mask
• Enterprise Cloud Type and Cloud Phase
• Enterprise Cloud Height
  • Cloud Top Height
  • Cloud Top Pressure
  • Cloud Top Temperature
  • Cloud Cover Layers
• Enterprise Cloud Base Height
• Daytime/Nighttime Cloud Optical and Microphysical Properties (DCOMP/NCOMP)
  • Cloud Optical depth
  • Cloud Effective Radius
  • Liquid Water Path
  • Ice Water Path

Products Performance Monitoring

• NOAA-AWG Cloud Remote Sensing at CIMSS: This page displays near-real time NOAA/NESDIS cloud products computed from geostationary (geo) and low-earth orbit (leo) sensors using the NOAA Enterprise Algorithms run at NESDIS Operations and at CIMSS.
• RealEarth: A data discovery and visualization platform for cloud products and imagery.
• SLIDER (Satellite Loop Interactive Data Explorer in Realtime): This website was designed to loop GOES-R (16/17), JPSS (S-NPP/NOAA-20), and Himawari-8 images in realtime. CIRA Slider shows VIIRS Enterpise Cloud Products.

Users

Used as an input to many other baseline products; NCEP (use of VIIRS cloud products for use in CrIS cloud characterization); Polar Winds Application; JPSS Hydro Initiative; NWS/AWC (Aviation Weather Center) and Boeing; Alaska NWS Region with GINA; NCEP/NWS to get VIIRS clouds in Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis (RTMA)