Tropical Cyclone Cloud Tops Observed by CALIOP, CPR, OMPS and SAGE-III

Tropical cyclone anvils provide ideal targets for comparing space-based observations of convective cloud tops because they have relatively long lifetimes during which there is less diurnal fluctuation in the large-scale anvil height, especially when compared with deep convective storms over land. They also provide a large dynamic range in particle sizes and in optical depth when observed from storm core to anvil edge. In this presentation we will compare recent observations of tropical cyclone cloud tops from the Cloud and Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) and the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR). We will also provide a statistical comparison with the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite Limb Profiler (OMPS-LP) and the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE-III) profiles. The purpose of this study is to compare how these space-based instruments with varied viewing geometries, vertical resolutions and operating wavelengths view the anvil cloud top heights and observe optical thickness gradients in tropical storm anvils.