Deriving Marine-Boundary-Layer Lapse Rate from Collocated CALIPSO, MODIS, and AMSR-E Data to Study Global Low-Cloud Height Statistics

Global cloud-top height statistics of marine-boundary-layer clouds are derived from the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) Level 2 aerosol and cloud layer products. The boundary-layer lapse rate in the northeast region of the Pacific Ocean is investigated using sea surface temperature (SST) data from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-EOS (AMSR-E), cloud-top temperature data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and cloud-top height data from CALIPSO. Based on the lapse rate derived from the combined CALIPSO/MODIS/AMSR-E measurements, cloud-top heights in regions within CALIPSO tracks are derived from AMSR SST and MODIS cloud temperature to test the validity of this approach. For homogeneous low-level clouds, the results agree with the cloud-top height from the collocated CALIPSO cloud-top height measurements. These results suggest that the database of derived lapse rates from the combined measurements can be applied to study cloud-top height climate statistics using the MODIS and AMSR data when CALIPSO observations are not available.