Cloud Statistics from Calipso Lidar Data for the ... - espace-tum.de

Contents
Declaration of Authorship
iii
Abstract
vii
Acknowledgements
ix
List of Figures
List of Tables
Abbreviations
SI Units and Abbreviations
Symbols
xiii
xv
xvii
xix
xxi
1 Introduction and motivation 1
1.1 The MERLIN mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 Methane as an important trace-gas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 The global methane budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.3 In-situ measurements and remote sensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.4 Scientific challenges and measurement strategy . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 The CALIPSO mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.1 Global cloud coverage by lidar measurements from space . . . . . . 8
1.2.2 Scientific challenges and limits of CALIPSO . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Background information and methodology of CALIPSO 11
2.1 The fundamental equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2 The CALIOP payload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3 The Cloud Detection Algorithm of CALIPSO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 CALIPSO data sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 CALIPSO lidar surface return . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3 Methodology behind cloud free and cloud gap statistics 24
xi