New Method for Retrieving Liquid Water Path over Land Using Amsr-e Observations

Measurements of cloud liquid water properties are important in a wide range of disciplines including climate change, numerical weather prediction (NWP) and aircraft icing. A variety of remote sensing techniques have been developed to address this need, including both visible/infrared and microwave methods. Unlike visible and infrared radiation, microwaves with frequencies of 90 GHz and less are insensitive to non-precipitating cloud ice particles, and are unaffected by the liquid cloud particle size distribution. Both of these features are desirable for characterizing cloud properties such as liquid water content (LWC) and liquid water path (LWP). Passive microwave techniques are particularly mature for (1) ground-based LWP retrievals and (2) satellite-based LWP retrievals over the oceans. Satellite-based methods for retrieving LWP over land are less mature. The main issue inhibiting satellite-based microwave retrievals of LWP over land so far has been discriminating cloud features from surface effects.