ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP Atmos. Chem. Phys. 1680-7324 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-14-5599-2014 Impact of cirrus clouds heterogeneities on top-of-atmosphere thermal infrared radiation Fauchez T. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5967-9631 1 Cornet C. 1 Szczap F 2 Dubuisson P. 1 Rosambert T. 2 Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique, Université Lille 1, Villeneuve d'Ascq, France Laboratoire de Météorologie Physique, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, France 05 06 2014 14 11 5599 5615 Copyright: © 2014 T. Fauchez et al. 2014 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/14/5599/2014/acp-14-5599-2014.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/14/5599/2014/acp-14-5599-2014.pdf

This paper presents a study of the impact of cirrus cloud heterogeneities on the thermal infrared brightness temperatures at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). Realistic 3-D cirri are generated by a cloud generator based on simplified thermodynamic and dynamic equations and on the control of invariant scale properties. The 3-D thermal infrared radiative transfer is simulated with a Monte Carlo model for three typical spectral bands in the infrared atmospheric window. Comparisons of TOA brightness temperatures resulting from 1-D and 3-D radiative transfer show significant differences for optically thick cirrus (τ > 0.3 at 532 nm) and are mainly due to the plane-parallel approximation (PPA). At the spatial resolution of 1 km × 1 km, two principal parameters control the heterogeneity effects on brightness temperatures: i) the optical thickness standard deviation inside the observation pixel, ii) the brightness temperature contrast between the top of the cirrus~and the clear-sky atmosphere. Furthermore, we show that the difference between 1-D and 3-D brightness temperatures increases with the zenith view angle from two to ten times between 0° and 60° due to the tilted independent pixel approximation (TIPA).

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