Clouds and Winds Associated with the Madden-Julian Oscillation: A New Perspective from MISR and the Use of Fused Datasets to Study MJO Initiation

Recent studies have provided new perspectives on the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) from different satellite platforms, including CloudSat, COSMIC, and Aquarius. In a similar manner we will present a view of the MJO from the perspective of the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument, which has been operational on NASA's Terra satellite since early 2000. MISR is uniquely suited for the study of the clouds and winds associated with the MJO as its multi-angle approach allows the retrieval of cloud-top heights and height resolved cloud motion vectors using a stereo technique. In this way, MISR retrievals do not depend on ancillary information as to the temperature structure of the atmosphere, and the quality of the retrievals is largely unaffected by changes in the instrument through its 14+ years of operation. MISR cloud-top heights are reported at a spatial resolution of 1.1 km, with a vertical resolution of better than 500 m. Cloud motion vectors have similar vertical resolution, but are reported on a 17.6 km grid. Because the state and evolution of the MJO depend on both the cloud development and both low and high-level winds, MISR can provide all three types of information nearly simultaneously for each phase of the MJO.

Furthermore, because the fundamental physical processes related to the initiation of the MJO in the central Indian Ocean occur across a range of scales in space and time, we will describe efforts to fuse coincident and time-lagged data from the MISR and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on the Terra satellite; the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and MODIS on the Aqua satellite; and the Precipitation Radar (PR), TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI), Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS), and Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. Such information has the potential to provide unprecedented detail on cloud and water vapor dynamics in the central Indian Ocean.