Connecting the global hydrological and energy cycles: A new approach to measuring cloud ice mass from earth viewing satellites

The amount of liquid and frozen water that the hydrological cycle moves through the atmosphere underpins all climate modeling efforts. While there are many satellite observations of clouds, we do not yet have the needed observations to understand the processes that control the water budget of the upper troposphere. We need better satellite observations of ice mass to better determine how ice cloud processes interact with the hydrological cycle. IWP and particle size are difficult geophysical parameters to measure because of the large dynamic range in ice cloud properties (e.g. several orders of magnitude in IWP) and the highly variable spatial distributions of ice clouds. Several studies have demonstrated that millimeter and submillimeter-wave (submm) frequencies over a range from approximately 183 to 916 GHz are ideally suited for observing ice clouds. We propose to take advantage of new technological capabilities to make measurements over this spectral band, along with infrared observations to substantially enhance and complement the submm measurements. This poster will describe an approach to measuring ice cloud properties.