Cloud and aerosol plume dynamics inferred by the Tandem Stereographic Camera concept as part of NASAs future Atmosphere Observing System: Aerosol, Cloud, Convection, and Precipitation (ACCP) satellite mission.

To fulfill the science needs described in the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey, NASAs Earth Science enterprise is developing an Atmosphere Observing System, the Aerosols, Clouds, Convection, and Precipitation (ACCP) mission. A key part of the proposed ACCP mission is a set of novel Tandem Stereographic Cameras. Taking advantage of two spacecrafts flying in close formation flight (with one instrument per spacecraft), the stereo cameras will collect a pair of stereo-images. Each stereo-image will provide a three-dimensional (3D) representation of the viewed scene that will include cloud and aerosol plume top heights; with time-differencing of the 3D representation providing a measure of vertical and horizontal motion (velocity). The dynamical information from the Tandem Stereographic Cameras, will be combined with cloud and aerosol microphysical properties obtained from a combination of ACCP observations to obtain a better understanding aerosol-cloud interactions for both shallow cumulus and stratocumulus cloud fields. In this presentation, we will present the instrument concept with its science and applications. We will highlight simulated retrievals results derived from synthetic cloud-resolving Large Eddy Simulation (LES) data, as well as an uncertainty quantification. The expected cloud and aerosol plume top height accuracy is around 50 m with a horizontal and vertical velocity accuracy around 1 m/s or better. We also demonstrate using LES data how retrievals might achieve even better accuracies due to the cancellation of uncorrelated retrieval errors (noise) between the image pairs, depending on the image resolution.