[1] Midlatitude cirrus cloud radiative forcing (CRF) values at the tropopause over China are estimated using a radiative transfer model initialized by Earth‐orbiting Cloud‐Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements. A derived diurnal mean CRF, solved as a function of solar zenith angle, , though varied over the sola...

We have examined the 532-nm aerosol backscatter coefficient measurements by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) for their use in the monitoring of stratospheric aerosol. CALIPSO makes observations that span from 82 S to 82 N each day and, for each profile, backscatter coefficient values reported up to ∼40 km. The possibility of using CALIPSO for stra...

RC: “Authors didn’t mention about the aerosol-retrieval uncertainties over the land, especially during large-scale fire events” AC: This has been mentioned in other papers we have cited and already performed over this region (Cohen, 2014; Cohen et al., 2017). However, for clarity the values will be added into this paper. There are two issues, the first with cloud cover, in which a bias may exis...

As hyperspectral instruments can provide the detailed spectral information, a new spectral similarity method for detecting and differentiating dust from non-dust scenes using the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) observations has been developed. The detection is based on a pre-defined Dust Spectral Similarity Index (DSSI), which was calculated from the accumulated brightness temperature diffe...

Assimilation of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) total aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieval products (at 550 nm wavelength) from both Terra and Aqua satellites have been developed within the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) data assimilation system. This newly developed ...