Assessing the Value Added to Radar-Radiometer Cirrus Retrievals by Ice Water Path Derived From Sub-millimeter Radiometry

During the CRYSTAL-FACE and TC4 campaigns, observations of several cirrus cloud events were made. Several retrieval algorithms designed for use with A-train instruments are applied to these events for the computation of ice water content and of effective particle size profiles. These retrievals are further constrained by values of cloud ice water path obtained from a sub-millimeter wavelength retrieval in order to study the efficacy of such a constraint. To these ends, data from the Cloud Radar System (CRS), the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL), the MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS), the MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator (MASTER), and from the Compact Scanning Submillimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer (CoSSIR) aboard the NASA ER-2 are used; and the results of these retrievals are compared with coordinated in situ measurements.