Author(s)

Aliton Oliveira da Silva¹, Augusto Jose Pereira Filho¹, Hugo Abi Karam²

¹Departamento de Ciências Atmosféricas, Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Rua do Matão 1226, São Paulo, Brazil.
²Centro de Ciências Matemáticas e da Natureza, Instituto de Geociências, Federal Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Rua Athos da Silveira Ramos 274, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The simplest way of building a look-up table (LUT) for the retrieval of cloud microphysical properties is to use a standard atmospheric profile and vertically uniform cloud microphysics. Such an assumption has been demonstrated to be incoherent with in-cloud observations. This paper aims to show the effect of some atmospheric conditions associated with fog as well as its macro-and microstructure on brightness temperature (BT) for the MSG/ SEVIRI satellite using libRadtran. The sensitivity tests were performed by gradually changing some features from the initial data, such as cloud cover, total water vapor column, thermal inversion intensity, fog depth, fog microstructure, and others. The results revealed that some variables can cause significant variations on BT and, consequently, discrepancies in the retrieval of fog microphysical properties. Also, a variation as high as 0.5°C was found on BT just by switching uniform to the non-uniform profile of fog microphysics depending on the channel, the droplet size, and optical thickness.

Fog Microphysics, MSG/SEVIRI, Sensitivity Test, LibRadtran

Oliveira da Silva, A. , Pereira Filho, A. and Karam, H. (2021) The Effect of the Atmospheric and Cloud Properties on the Retrieval of Fog Microphysics at Night for MSG/SEVIRI: A Sensitivity Test Using LibRadtran. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 11, 441-457. doi: 10.4236/acs.2021.113026.