Estimating of atmospheric parameters on land using AMSR-E, part II: Inferring cloud liquid water

This paper presents a new scheme to retrieve cloud liquid water (CLW) over land using AMSR-E brightness temperatures (TB) without the help of ancillary data. A surface emission model, Advanced Integral Equation Model (AIEM) and an one-dimensional atmosphere transfer model (1DRTM) were combined to generate a database. Through analysis of the simulated dataset, it is found that the ratio of the polarization difference obtained from 36.5 and 89 GHz (ΔTB(36.5) / ΔTB(89), called PDR_CLW later) is sensitive to CLW. The algorithm was validated using AMSR-E observations over the Southern Great Plains. The CLW data retrieved by five ground based microwave radiometers (MWR) were used to validate the algorithm, with RMS error of 0.11 mm.