Title :
Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) for the CloudSat Mission
Author :
Li, F.K. ; Im, E. ; Durden, S.L. ; Girard, R. ; Sadowy, G. ; Wu, C.
Author_Institution :
Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA
Abstract :
The CloudSat Mission is a new satellite mission currently being developed by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to acquire a global data set of vertical cloud structure and its variability. Such data set will provide crucial input to the studies of radiation budget and water distribution in the atmosphere, and to the numerical weather prediction models. One key science instrument aboard the CloudSat satellite is the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR). CPR is a 94-GHz nadir-looking radar that measures the power backscattered by clouds as a function of distance from the radar. These data will provide an along-track vertical profile of cloud structure. The operational geometry is described. The authors present the system design and the expected performance of this instrument, as well as the state-of-the art millimeter-wave technologies employed by this instrument
Keywords :
atmospheric measuring apparatus; clouds; meteorological radar; radar equipment; remote sensing by radar; spaceborne radar; 94 GHz; CPR; CSA; Canadian Space Agency; Cloud Profiling Radar; CloudSat; EHF; NASA; along-track vertical profile; atmosphere; backscatter; cloud; design; equipment; instrument; measurement technique; meteorological radar; mm wave; nadir-looking; operational geometry; radar remote sensing; radiation budget; satellite mission; satellite remote sensing; spaceborne radar; variability; vertical structure; Atmosphere; Atmospheric modeling; Clouds; Instruments; NASA; Radar measurements; Satellites; Space missions; Spaceborne radar; Weather forecasting;
Conference_Titel :
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2000. Proceedings. IGARSS 2000. IEEE 2000 International
Conference_Location :
Honolulu, HI
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-6359-0
DOI :
10.1109/IGARSS.2000.860259
