Aerosols and clouds play important roles in Earth's climate system but uncertainties over their interactions and their
effects on the Earth energy budget limit our understanding of the climate system and our ability to model it. The
CALIPSO satellite was developed to provide new capabilities to observe aerosol and cloud from space and to reduce
these uncertainties. CALIPSO carries the first polarization-sensitive lidar to fly in space, which has now provided a
four-year record of global aerosol and cloud profiles. This paper briefly summarizes the status of the CALIPSO mission,
describes some of the results from CALIPSO, and presents highlights of recent improvements in data products.
Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments were designed to measure the reflected
shortwave and emitted longwave radiances of the Earth's radiation budget and to investigate the cloud interactions
with global radiances for the long-term monitoring of Earth's climate. The three scanning thermistor bolometers
measure the broadband radiances in the shortwave (0.3 to 5.0 micrometer), total (0.3 to >100 micrometer) and 8 - 12
micrometer water vapor window regions. Four CERES instruments (Flight Models1 through 4) are flying aboard
EOS Terra and Aqua platforms with two instruments aboard each spacecraft.
The post launch calibration of CERES sensors are carried out using the internal calibration module (ICM)
comprising of blackbody sources and quartz-halogen tungsten lamp, and a solar diffuser plate known as the Mirror
Attenuator Mosaic (MAM). The ICM calibration results are instrumental in understanding the shift in CERES
sensors' gains after launch from the pre-launch determined values. Several validation studies are also conducted
with the CERES measurements to monitor the behavior of the sensors in various spectral regions. In addition to the
broadband response changes derived from the on-board blackbody and the tungsten lamp, the shortwave and the
total sensors show further drop in responsivity in the UV spectral region that were brought to light through
validation studies. Further analyses were performed to correct for these response changes at all spectral regions. This
paper reports the sensor response changes that were determined with the on-board calibration sources and the
investigation of the additional factors that influence the performance of the CERES sensors in orbit.
Infrared radiance spectra from near nadir observations have provided information about tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO). The NPOESS Airborne Sounder Testbed-Interferometer (NAST-I) aboard a high altitude aircraft with a spectral coverage of 650-2700 cm-1 and a spectral resolution of 0.25 cm-1 has been successfully collecting the data during many field campaigns. The spectral sensitivity of CO retrievals to uncertainties in atmospheric temperature, water vapor, and surface properties is assessed in order to understand the correlation between the IR emission and the atmospheric and surface state. The profiles are determined using a three-stage approach that combines three algorithms: (1) statistical eigenvector regression, (2) simultaneous non-linear matrix inversion, and (3) CO-physical iteration retrieval. Retrieved CO abundances are obtained in addition to temperature, moisture, ozone profiles, and surface properties. Preliminary results from several NAST-I field campaigns are presented including those from observations over the western Pacific Ocean made in conjunction with airborne truth atmospheric chemistry profiles associated with the TRACE-P campaign.
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