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    Increasing the spatial resolution of cloud property retrievals from Meteosat SEVIRI by use of its high-resolution visible channel: implementation and examples
    (Katlenburg-Lindau : European Geosciences Union, 2021) Deneke, Hartwig; Barrientos-Velasco, Carola; Bley, Sebastian; Hünerbein, Anja; Lenk, Stephan; Macke, Andreas; Meirink, Jan Fokke; Schroedter-Homscheidt, Marion; Senf, Fabian; Wang, Ping; Werner, Frank; Witthuhn, Jonas
    The modification of an existing cloud property retrieval scheme for the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on board the geostationary Meteosat satellites is described to utilize its high-resolution visible (HRV) channel for increasing the spatial resolution of its physical outputs. This results in products with a nadir spatial resolution of 1×1ĝ€¯km2 compared to the standard 3×3ĝ€¯km2 resolution offered by the narrowband channels. This improvement thus greatly reduces the resolution gap between current geostationary and polar-orbiting meteorological satellite imagers. In the first processing step, cloudiness is determined from the HRV observations by a threshold-based cloud masking algorithm. Subsequently, a linear model that links the 0.6ĝ€¯μm, 0.8ĝ€¯μm, and HRV reflectances provides a physical constraint to incorporate the spatial high-frequency component of the HRV observations into the retrieval of cloud optical depth. The implementation of the method is described, including the ancillary datasets used. It is demonstrated that the omission of high-frequency variations in the cloud-absorbing 1.6ĝ€¯μm channel results in comparatively large uncertainties in the retrieved cloud effective radius, likely due to the mismatch in channel resolutions. A newly developed downscaling scheme for the 1.6ĝ€¯μm reflectance is therefore applied to mitigate the effects of this scale mismatch. Benefits of the increased spatial resolution of the resulting SEVIRI products are demonstrated for three example applications: (i) for a convective cloud field, it is shown that significantly better agreement between the distributions of cloud optical depth retrieved from SEVIRI and from collocated MODIS observations is achieved. (ii) The temporal evolution of cloud properties for a growing convective storm at standard and HRV spatial resolutions are compared, illustrating an improved contrast in growth signatures resulting from the use of the HRV channel. (iii) An example of surface solar irradiance, determined from the retrieved cloud properties, is shown, for which the HRV channel helps to better capture the large spatiotemporal variability induced by convective clouds. These results suggest that incorporating the HRV channel into the retrieval has potential for improving Meteosat-based cloud products for several application domains.
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    The HD(CP)2 Observational Prototype Experiment (HOPE) - An overview
    (Katlenburg-Lindau : EGU, 2017) Macke, Andreas; Seifert, Patric; Baars, Holger; Barthlott, Christian; Beekmans, Christoph; Behrendt, Andreas; Bohn, Birger; Brueck, Matthias; Bühl, Johannes; Crewell, Susanne; Damian, Thomas; Deneke, Hartwig; Düsing, Sebastian; Foth, Andreas; Di Girolamo, Paolo; Hammann, Eva; Heinze, Rieke; Hirsikko, Anne; Kalisch, John; Kalthoff, Norbert; Kinne, Stefan; Kohler, Martin; Löhnert, Ulrich; Madhavan, Bomidi Lakshmi; Maurer, Vera; Muppa, Shravan Kumar; Schween, Jan; Serikov, Ilya; Siebert, Holger; Simmer, Clemens; Späth, Florian; Steinke, Sandra; Träumner, Katja; Trömel, Silke; Wehner, Birgit; Wieser, Andreas; Wulfmeyer, Volker; Xie, Xinxin
    The HD(CP)2 Observational Prototype Experiment (HOPE) was performed as a major 2-month field experiment in Jülich, Germany, in April and May 2013, followed by a smaller campaign in Melpitz, Germany, in September 2013. HOPE has been designed to provide an observational dataset for a critical evaluation of the new German community atmospheric icosahedral non-hydrostatic (ICON) model at the scale of the model simulations and further to provide information on land-surface-atmospheric boundary layer exchange, cloud and precipitation processes, as well as sub-grid variability and microphysical properties that are subject to parameterizations. HOPE focuses on the onset of clouds and precipitation in the convective atmospheric boundary layer. This paper summarizes the instrument set-ups, the intensive observation periods, and example results from both campaigns.

    HOPE-Jülich instrumentation included a radio sounding station, 4 Doppler lidars, 4 Raman lidars (3 of them provide temperature, 3 of them water vapour, and all of them particle backscatter data), 1 water vapour differential absorption lidar, 3 cloud radars, 5 microwave radiometers, 3 rain radars, 6 sky imagers, 99 pyranometers, and 5 sun photometers operated at different sites, some of them in synergy. The HOPE-Melpitz campaign combined ground-based remote sensing of aerosols and clouds with helicopter- and balloon-based in situ observations in the atmospheric column and at the surface.

    HOPE provided an unprecedented collection of atmospheric dynamical, thermodynamical, and micro- and macrophysical properties of aerosols, clouds, and precipitation with high spatial and temporal resolution within a cube of approximately 10 × 10 × 10km3. HOPE data will significantly contribute to our understanding of boundary layer dynamics and the formation of clouds and precipitation. The datasets have been made available through a dedicated data portal.

    First applications of HOPE data for model evaluation have shown a general agreement between observed and modelled boundary layer height, turbulence characteristics, and cloud coverage, but they also point to significant differences that deserve further investigations from both the observational and the modelling perspective.
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    Meteorological conditions during the ACLOUD/PASCAL field campaign near Svalbard in early summer 2017
    (Katlenburg-Lindau : EGU, 2018) Knudsen, Erlend M.; Heinold, Bernd; Dahlke, Sandro; Bozem, Heiko; Crewell, Susanne; Gorodetskaya, Irina V.; Heygster, Georg; Kunkel, Daniel; Maturilli, Marion; Mech, Mario; Viceto, Carolina; Rinke, Annette; Schmithüsen, Holger; Ehrlich, André; Macke, Andreas; Lüpkes, Christof; Wendisch, Manfred
    The two concerted field campaigns, Arctic CLoud Observations Using airborne measurements during polar Day (ACLOUD) and the Physical feedbacks of Arctic planetary boundary level Sea ice, Cloud and AerosoL (PASCAL), took place near Svalbard from 23 May to 26 June 2017. They were focused on studying Arctic mixed-phase clouds and involved observations from two airplanes (ACLOUD), an icebreaker (PASCAL) and a tethered balloon, as well as ground-based stations. Here, we present the synoptic development during the