Launched onboard NASA's Terra EOS satellite in late 1999, the MISR instrument has acquired over 11 years of high quality scientific data on clouds, aerosols, and land surfaces. From polar orbit, MISR simultaneously provides global coverage and high spatial resolution. Stereo-derived cloud-top heights are reported at 1.1 km horizontal resolution at a nominal vertical resolution of 500 m. Similarly height-resolved cloud motion vectors are reported at 70.4 km spatial resolution. Importantly, especially for climate studies, cloud detection, height assignment, and wind retrieval are all largely insensitive to instrument calibration changes because they rely on fast feature matching algorithms that depend only on relative brightness values, rather than the absolute magnitude of the brightness.

We will describe recent work using the MISR cloud height and wind information to study climate variability and change. Global cloud and wind systems track changes in the global energy budget and yield important insights into processes related to the hydrologic cycle and transport of heat and water vapor. Specifically, we will focus on the interannual behavior of the equatorial Hadley circulation and changes in the zonal mean winds. In addition, we will examine the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) as seen from the perspective of MISR.