Development of an MFRSR Network for Aerosol-cloud interaction studies

The development and data analysis of a regional Multi-Filter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (MFRSR) Network for real-time monitoring of the atmosphere aerosols in support of long term climate change will be reported. The approach used is based on the algorithm development at NASA GISS and makes use of combined diffuse and direct radiances to extract both fine and coarse mode AOD as well as estimates of the fine mode effective radius in the assumed bimodal distribution parameters. Furthermore, we explore an extension of this approach for retrieval of single scattering albedos. This is done by ingesting estimates of the microphysical model parameters and surface reflectance to calculate the diffuse / direct scattering ratio. Furthermore, we show the need to calculate the band correction in the solar aureole region using Radiative transfer accounting for the blocked band geometry. Further applications will include direct estimates of Cloud Optical Depth which we combine with Microwave Radiometer (MWR) measurements to explore cloud droplet size spectra and the affect of aerosols on cloud properties.