Cloud Property Retrievals for CERES from Suomi NPP and JPSS-1 VIIRS to Continue a Long-Term Cloud and Radiation Climate Data Record

The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) is a long-term project to monitor the Earth’s radiation budget and its interaction with clouds. To minimize algorithm and input data artifacts in the record, it is necessary to provide consistent input data from CERES scanners, satellite imagers, and ancillary data products. The project has relied on its own analyses of MODIS data to provide cloud properties to accompany the CERES Terra and Aqua broadband radiation scanner data. To date, these cloud parameters have been very consistent, except for some MODIS calibration issues. The CERES cloud properties play a critical role in the development of the radiation budget climate data record (CDR) from CERES and constitute a high-quality CDR in themselves. As Terra and Aqua approach the ends of their lifetimes, CERES is continuing with scanners on both the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) and first Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1) platforms, which have equatorial crossing times similar to that of Aqua. Cloud detection and retrieval algorithms developed by CERES for application to MODIS have been adapted to use on radiances measured by the SNPP and JPSS-1 Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). This paper describes the changes in the MODIS algorithms and the consistency of the results from VIIRS with those from concurrent Aqua MODIS. The results are also compared with other types of validation data. Future changes in the algorithms are also discussed.