Towards a quality control for cloud top pressure and cloud top height products

• Main Author: Nyman, Oscar
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Luleå tekniska universitet, Institutionen för system- och rymdteknik 2017
• Subjects: remote sensing; cloud top pressure; atmospheric radiation
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-61977

Cloud top height plays an important roll in the energy budget and is also important for aviation. This thesis concerns the quality control of cloud top height (CTH) retrievals. The approach for quality controlling retrieved CTH has been using the forward simulating software RTTOV. An error estimation function has been developed as well as an investigation to what simplifications can be done regarding the forward simulations for CTH purposes at SMHI. The purpose of the error estimation function is to validate CTH output from CTH retrieval algorithms by giving a rough error estimate of the retrieved CTH compared to what forward simulations predict. For simplifying the forward simulations the most promising results have been shown for lower clouds. Further testing is still of interest and for future work suggestions are provided regarding the error estimation function as well as for simplifying the forward simulations.