This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 10776, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Author and Conference Committee lists.

The Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) installed on the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) core satellite was developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). GPM core observatory was successfully launched by H-IIA launch vehicle on Feb 28, 2014. JAXA is continuing DPR trend monitoring, calibration and validation operations to confirm that DPR keeps its function and performance on orbit. The results of DPR trend monitoring, calibration and validation showed that DPR kept its function and performance on orbit during the 3 years and 2 months prime mission period. JAXA confirmed the prime mission results of GPM/DPR total system achieved the success criteria and the performance indicators. GPM/DPR moved to extended mission phase. JAXA conducted two types of scan pattern change test operations, KaPR-HS outer swath scan pattern and KuPR and KaPR wider swath scan. These useful data will help feasibility studies of the proposed KaPR scan pattern for the next DPR product version up and the future spaceborne radar development.

In this paper, we propose the synergistic use of geostationary and polar orbital satellites, namely the thirdgeneration Himawari-8, GCOM-C and EarthCARE. These satellites have been or will be launched in the middle of the 2010s to the early of 2020s will contribute to observing aerosols, clouds, and radiation in the Earth system. Because aerosols and clouds exert great effects on the planet’s water, energy, and radiation balances and processes, it is important to gather more observations and improve our understanding of the lifecycle of these particles. Complementing existing passive sensors, CloudSat and CALIPSO have ushered in a new era in aerosol and cloud observations to reveal the particle transition, from cloud condensation nuclei to rain droplets via clouds and drizzle particles. Contoured Frequency by Optical Depth Diagrams (CFODDs), a method of visualizing the CloudSat radar reflectivities, clearly show the transition of cloud growth, from cloud droplet mode to rain mode via drizzle mode. Moreover, the thirdgeneration geostationary weather satellite, which began its operation in 2015, observes global-scale aerosols and cloud systems every 10 min (or 2.5min). Therefore, the combined use of polar orbital passive/active sensors and geostationary satellites will reveal details of the cloud evolution process by using the multi-spectral and vertical observations of the passive/active sensors.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) is developing a compact, light-weight, and lowpower midwave-infrared (MWIR) imager called the Compact Midwave Imaging Sensor (CMIS), under the support of the NASA Earth Science Technology Office Instrument Incubator Program. The goal of this CMIS instrument development and demonstration project is to increase the technical readiness of CMIS, a multi-spectral sensor capable of retrieving 3D winds and cloud heights 24/7, for a space mission. The CMIS instrument employs an advanced MWIR detector that requires less cooling than traditional technologies and thus permits a compact, low-power design, which enables accommodation on small spacecraft such as CubeSats. CMIS provides the critical midwave component of a multi-spectral sensor suite that includes a high-resolution Day-Night Band and a longwave infrared (LWIR) imager to provide global cloud characterization and theater weather imagery. In this presentation, an overview of the CMIS project, including the high-level sensor design, the concept of operations, and measurement capability will be presented. System performance for a variety of different scenes generated by a cloud resolving model (CRM) will also be discussed.

With internal research and development (IRAD) and NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) funding, Ball Aerospace has developed the HSRL (high spectral resolution lidar) for Aerosols Winds and Clouds using the Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar (HAWC-OAWL) – a Doppler wind lidar system to measure winds and aerosol levels from aerosol backscatter. The Doppler receiver uses a Quadrature Mach Zehnder Interferometer (QMZI) receiver that measures changes in fringe phase (e.g. Doppler induced changes in laser frequency) and fringe amplitude (illumination coherence length). Airborne flight tests in 2016 demonstrated the performance of a two-look version of the system in making line-of-sight (LOS) wind measurements and in retrieving horizontal vector wind estimates from aircraft. Subsequently, ground-tests alongside NCAR’s HSRL system providing known aerosol profiles demonstrated that the instrument performance model accurately predicts the measurement uncertainty. The system has since been reconfigured for the DC-8 aircraft to include two-looks, two-wavelengths and depolarization measurements. Current ground-based studies at Ball Aerospace are focused on demonstrating HSRL measurements with HAWC-OAWL using the QMZI ability to measure fringe amplitude as well as phase. The combined HSRL and winds measurement enables studies of aerosol transport as well as impacts of winds on cloud formations. We will review the QMZI theory and present preliminary results of HSRL data products from ground-based measurements.

A geostationary microwave sounder, GeoSTAR, capable of providing continuous monitoring every 15 minutes of atmospheric temperature, water vapor, clouds, precipitation, and wind in the presence of clouds and precipitation, which will add tremendously to our ability to observe rapidly evolving dynamic atmospheric phenomena, such as hurricanes and severe storms, monsoonal moisture flow, and atmospheric rivers, has been developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. GeoSTAR uses aperture synthesis to overcome the difficulty of attaining adequate spatial resolution from geostationary orbit. It is made possible with new technology that has now been developed and fully tested. Low-risk mission development can start as soon as funding becomes available. The sensor can be hosted on a commercial communications satellite, which could reduce the cost substantially. Plans have been developed at JPL for such a mission, called “GeoStorm”, focused on observing severe convective storms – tropical cyclones, mesoscale convective systems, and extratropical cyclones – with a goal of improving our understanding, modeling and prediction of these destructive phenomena. It can equally well be configured as an operational mission, where the goal is to collect data for immediate assimilation into regional forecast systems, provide “now-casting” as the storms unfold, and support post-disaster relief and recovery efforts. With key observables including vertical profiles of temperature, water vapor, wind and precipitation over a wide area, many focused applications are possible, particularly pertaining to aviation, transportation and marine operations, in both the civilian and defense domains.

Recent technological advances have enabled the miniaturization of microwave instruments (radars and radiometers) so they can fit on very small satellites, with enough capability to measure atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds. The miniaturization makes these systems inexpensive enough to allow scientists to contemplate placing several examples in low-Earth orbit concurrently, to observe atmospheric dynamics in clouds and storms. To identify the most important weather and climate problems that can be addressed with these new observations, and to develop corresponding observation strategies using these "distributed" systems, specific analyses were conducted and used to justify "distributed" measurement requirements and quantify their expected performance. This presentation will describe the types of convoys, the expected observations, and their applications.

Microwave instrumentation is particularly well suited for implementation on a very small satellite, as the sensor requirements for power, pointing, and spatial resolution (aperture size) can in some cases be accommodated by a nanosatellite platform. The Microsized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite Version 2a (MicroMAS-2a), launched on January 11, 2018 and has demonstrated temperature sounding using channels near 118 GHz and humidity sounding using channels near 183 GHz. A second MicroMAS-2 flight unit (MicroMAS-2b) will be launched in late 2018 as part of ELANA-XX. The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS) mission was selected by NASA in 2016 as part of the Earth Venture–Instrument (EVI-3) program. The overarching goal for TROPICS is to provide nearly all-weather observations of 3-D temperature and humidity, as well as cloud ice and precipitation horizontal structure, at high temporal resolution to conduct high-value science investigations of tropical cyclones. TROPICS will provide rapid-refresh microwave measurements (median refresh rate of approximately 40 minutes for the baseline mission) over the tropics that can be used to observe the thermodynamics of the troposphere and precipitation structure for storm systems at the mesoscale and synoptic scale over the entire storm lifecycle. TROPICS comprises a constellation of six CubeSats in three low-Earth orbital planes. Each CubeSat will host a high performance radiometer to provide temperature profiles using seven channels near the 118.75 GHz oxygen absorption line, water vapor profiles using three channels near the 183 GHz water vapor absorption line, imagery in a single channel near 90 GHz for precipitation measurements (when combined with higher resolution water vapor channels), and a single channel at 206 GHz that is more sensitive to precipitation-sized ice particles. TROPICS flight hardware development is on track for a 2019 delivery.

Development of precipitation retrieval algorithms for spaceborne radar began with the launch of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission which carried the world first Precipitation Radar (PR). The standard Algorithm for the Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) onboard the GPM satellite was developed based on the experience of the TRMM PR algorithm1. The latest DPR algorithm works well and satisfies the mission requirements. Nevertheless, there are still several output variables whose quality can be improved. For example, the threshold for precipitation detection can be lowered to detect more light precipitation without much increase of false detections by adopting a better filtering method than the current method. Removal of surface clutter is related to the detection of precipitation and expected to be improved too. Attenuation correction is another important area of improvement. The current attenuation correction method uses the surface reference technique (SRT) when the attenuation is large. There is a possibility of using radiometric noise for this purpose. The directions of the high sensitivity beams of the DPR’s Ka-band radar, which is called KaPR, were changed to cover the outer swath in March of 2018. Ku and Ka matched beam data are now available over the full swath so that the dualfrequency algorithm can be applied to the entire data. The new scan pattern is expected to improve not only the precipitation retrieval algorithm but also the classification algorithm. This paper summarizes these possible improvement areas in the DPR algorithm.

The Earth Clouds, Aerosols and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) satellite is a joint European Space Agency and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency mission scheduled to launch in 2021. EarthCARE (EC) will host the first Doppler cloud profiling radar (CPR) in space which, in addition to constraining microphysical retrievals in particle sedimentation regimes, is expected to provide the first ever global observations of convective vertical air motion and associated mass fluxes. Here, the potential of the EC-CPR velocity measurements in convection is evaluated using forward-simulations performed using a state-of-the-art EC-CPR Doppler simulator and output from high-resolution, bulk microphysics numerical models. Results indicate that the EC-CPR has the potential to measure Doppler velocities in the top 40 % of convective cores, the rest being not observed/contaminated by attenuation and multiple scattering. In these observable regions, non-uniform beam filling (NUBF) and velocity aliasing could affect the quality of the velocity measurements. We show how observed reflectivity gradient can be used to correct for NUBF effects on Doppler velocity to achieve an accuracy higher than 0.3-0.5 ms^-1 . Velocity aliasing remains an important challenge. Our results suggest that the current Nyquist velocity of the EC-CPR will enable it to document, with minimal need for de-aliasing correction, convective events with vertical velocity below 7-8 ms^-1 while the information collected about more vigorous events is expected to be more challenging to recover. Overall, despite it being affected by several limiting factors, the EC-CPR has the potential to collect valuable velocity observations in deep convection thus complementing the current sparse ground-based record.

The Qilianshan Mountain area is very important for water resources and ecosystem safety of the Northwest China and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Satellite remote sensing is the best way to estimate precipitation over this region in the future due to the complex terrain and sparse of ground weather stations. The primary goal of this research is to evaluate the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B43 rainfall products during 2008 ~ 2017 over the region, by using the gridded precipitation data and routine ground-based observation data from National Meteorological Information Center (NMIC) of China, combining with the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC, MCD12Q1) and topographic data (SRTM). Results show that accuracy of TRMM precipitation has changed a lot except in winter (arid season). Correlation coefficient of TRMM precipitation against the ground-based observations varies from 0.33 to 0.67, indicating that TRMM product is applicable over the Qilianshan mountain area. Seasonal variation of the relative error is mainly in the northeast and southwest areas. The TRMM rain products are greatly affected by topography, and its overestimations are basically distributed in the valley or trough areas. According to analysis of the land use classification, accuracy of the TRMM precipitation is obviously impacted by the sparse vegetation, evergreen broad-leaved forest and city area.

The daily dataset of coherent total column ozone were created from FY3/TOU from 2008 to 2017. Using total column ozone from FY3/TOU and tropospheric and stratospheric column ozone from AURA OMI/MLS satellite data, the seasonal variations of the climatological ozone in the region (40°E-160°E, 0-60ºN) are analyzed for the total, tropospheric and stratospheric column, respectively. Differences of ozone and circulation pattern between strong and weak East Asian summer monsoon year are also investigated. Variation of total, tropospheric and stratospheric column ozone is dominated by a low value center over the Tibetan Plateau and abnormal distribution in the monsoon region. There are significant differences of ozone concentration and circulation pattern during strong and weak monsoon in summer. The combination of the monsoon anomaly and the upper westerly jet anomaly affects obviously distribution of the tropospheric and stratospheric ozone during summer in the East Asia and the western Pacific regions.

The monthly precipitation and temperature data，soil moisture data and NDVI data from 1981 to 2010 in Eastern Gansu were used to analyze the temperature, precipitation, soil moisture and drought change in this area. The results show that: 1) The climate in Eastern Gansu appeared a significant warming trend, and the temperature increase was extremely significant in spring, summer, autumn and winter. Among them, the spring temperature increase was the largest with the rate of 0.82 °C/10a. 2) The annual precipitation has experienced a process of high-low-high in the past 30 years. Among them precipitation in spring continued to decrease, while other seasons showed increase tendency in the 21st century after a decline in the last 10 years of the 20th century. 3) The soil moisture in the whole layer (10-100cm) in spring showed a significant downward trend, especially in the surface layer. During the growth season, the water storage capacity of the whole layer of soil decreased significantly. 4) The frequency and extent of drought events in Eastern Gansu experienced a change of low-high-low process. The lowest period of drought occurred in the 1980s and the highest period occurred in the 1990s. The frequency and extent in the first 10 years of this century declined. 5) The spring drought occurred most frequently and strongest intensity in the past 30a. AVI has a good consistency with CI and soil moisture on the monitoring of drought process, but the volatility is higher.

Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) is one of the most important greenhouse gases after water vapor (H₂O) which plays significant role in the climate process. Accurate space-based measurement of CO₂ is of great significance in inferring the location of CO₂ sources and sinks. Uncertainties in greenhouse gases (GHG) retrieval process must be minimized to accurately infer the actual amount of the atmospheric species. Clouds pose a large uncertainty in CO₂ spacebased retrieval process leading, mostly, to an underestimation in the CO₂ absorption amount above the cloud layer provided that photons do not perform multiple paths. In this paper, three different cases of data collected over cloudy and clear skies by Argus 1000 micro-spectrometer were analyzed. Findings show that the CO₂ absorption in the absence of clouds is approximately 4.5% higher than when clouds are present.

A method is given to calculate the atmospheric vertical visibility profile through the extinction coefficient which provided from the Level 2 aerosol optical products of CALIPSO spaceborne lidar. Five visibility profiles during haze around Shanghai (3 for daytime and 2 for nighttime) were analyzed in this paper to reveal vertical distribution characteristics during haze and non-haze period. Results show that vertical visibility during the haze period is from 0 to 3km where aerosols were mainly concentrated in the haze layer. The mean thickness of aerosol layer whose visibility is less than 10km was 2.27km, and the vertical height shows characteristics of both uniform and non-uniform distributions. During the non-haze period, less aerosols were distributed in the atmosphere so that there was a significantly higher vertical visibility than in haze cases.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has addressed the water issues by conducting the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission. GPM core satellite carries Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR). DPR can observe 3-dimensional precipitation with high accuracy, whereas the observation swath is narrow, and observation is not so frequent. To achieve the high frequent precipitation observation, we developed the multi-satellite precipitation product called Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation (GSMaP) under the collaboration with international GPM constellation satellite. GSMaP provides hourly global precipitation distribution by 0.1 x 0.1 degrees latitude/longitude, and its utilization is spread especially over the Asian countries and used in various fields. As one of the future precipitation observation missions discussed in JAXA, there is the concept of small precipitation radar constellation. This can improve the quality of GSMaP if realized. In this study, the impact on accuracy of GSMaP caused by the increase of radar observation is evaluated over Japan area. Japan Meteorological Agency provides highaccurate and high-resolution ground precipitation radar data calibrated by rain gauges. This ground observation data is assumed as future precipitation radar data and inserted to the GSMaP processing in some temporal intervals. The sampling errors are taken into consideration. The relationship between temporal interval of insertion (assumed as radar observation frequency) and improvement of accuracy is verified and discussed.

The Kuroshio is the western boundary current of the North Pacific Ocean. Kuroshio intrudes into the north of South China Sea (SCS) through the Luzon Strait. The intruded Kuroshio often forms an anticyclonic current loop north of the Luzon Strait. Previous studies confirmed co-variability of sea surface temperature (SST) influence on the local atmosphere. In this study, by using satellite data and numerical modeling, the impact of Kuroshio intrusion (KI) entering north Luzon Strait on the local atmosphere is investigated. First, satellite data analysis shows that KI causing increased local sea surface temperature and enhanced intensity of wind speed and rainfall off southwestern Taiwan during easterly winds (from November to April). Moreover, based on vertical velocity (w) of atmosphere derived from reanalysis data, the result shows that higher local SST (associated with KI) triggering enhanced wind speed and rainfall by enhancing lower atmosphere vertical motion and thus decreasing vertical wind shear, which leads to intensify of vertical mixing.

The second global imager (SGLI) is on board the Japanese mission GCOM-C (SHIKISAI in Japanese), which was launched on December 23, 2017. The SGLI has multiple channels (19), including near-UV (0.380 μm) and violet (0.412 μm) wavelengths, and polarization channels in the red and near-IR wavelengths. This study aimed to demonstrate such advantages of SGLI as near-UV and polarization measurements for aerosol remote sensing. The role of near UV data in the detection of absorbing aerosols, such as biomass burning aerosols (BBA) or mineral dust, is examined on a global scale. Not only is this absorbing aerosol index defined in the near-UV wavelength region, but short wavelength infrared measurements were utilized to discriminate BBA from mineral dust particles. First, an understanding of aerosol types facilitates subsequent aerosol retrieval. Then, the characterization for classified aerosols is made based on the radiation simulations with multi-spectral radiance and polarization measurements in the red and near- IR.

Based on daily precipitation data of 19 weather stations from 1971~2017 over the Hexi Corridor in Gansu, characteristics of three analytical elements (precipitation, rain days and precipitation intensity) were analyzed. Results show that precipitation in the whole Hexi Corridor increases significantly in the autumn, and the winter precipitation in the east of Jiuquan to Zhangye also increases significantly. Rainy days in summer decreases significantly, while increases significantly in autumn. The extreme events using the three analytical elements account for 56% in 2000s, showing a significant increase. It accounted only for 16%, 10%, and 18% in 1970s, 1980s and 1990s respectively. Seasonal variability of the extreme events is also significant, i.e., 70% in summer, 60% in autumn, 50% in spring and winter. The frequency of the three analytical extreme events since 2000s is about half of that since 1971.Potential causes of the interdecadal changes of summer and autumn precipitation in 1990s and 2000s were investigated. There are obvious interdecadal variation in 200 hPa and 500 hPa geopotential heights, as well as the 700 hPa relative humidity and specific humidity. This variation leads to more autumn precipitation and less summer precipitation in 2000s.

Asian dust (i.e., dust and sandstorm: DSS) is a phenomenon that wind-borne soil and mineral particles are raised thousands of meters into the air in arid and semi-arid regions of China and Mongolia, and is carried by westerly winds and sometimes reaches Japan. The PM2.5 air pollution often occurs in urban and industrial areas of China recently, and sometimes flows into Japan. DSS and PM2.5 affect the human health. DSS can be detected by using AVI method of the satellite remote sensing technique. AVI is defined as AVI=T12-T11, where T12 and T11 are the brightness temperatures at 12μm and 11μm wave lengths, respectively. For MODIS data, T12 and T11 correspond to band32 and band31, respectively. PM2.5 can be detected by using the proposed method {R, G, B} = {band10, band 9, T11}. In this paper, these methods are applied to the DSS events which aggravated Respiratory Symptoms (Asthma) in Western Japan in May 2011. The DustRGB method {R, G, B} = {AVI, T11-T8.5, T11}, which was proposed by EUMETSAT in 2011, is examined and also is applied to some dust images.

Characteristics of the atmospheric low-frequency oscillation on the drought process during the flood season (May to September) in eastern part of the northwest China are analyzed using the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data and conventional surface precipitation data. Results show the low-frequency characteristics of the southward and eastward propagation in the middle and high latitudes, and the divergence airflow over eastern part of the northwest China during the drought. Drought event occurs during propagation of the low-frequency north wind and before convergence of the north and south airflows. The drought process mainly occurs in the negative phase of relative vorticity low-frequency oscillation and in the positive phase of the OLR low-frequency oscillation, i.e., in the period of relatively weak convection. A method based on the atmospheric Low-Frequency diagnosis was used to predict the meteorological drought event in eastern part of the northwest China. The forecast results are promising on the meteorological drought event during the flood season from 2010 to 2017.