ACE-ASIA Satellite:  DMSP SSM/I Derived Products, Cloud Liquid Water Imagery (GIF)


1.0  General Information


The DMSP SSM/I Cloud Liquid Water Imagery (GIF) is one of several satellite products
collected as part of the ACE-Asia project field catalog operated by the University 
Corporation for Atmospheric Research/Joint Office for Science Support (UCAR/JOSS;
http://www.joss.ucar.edu/ace-asia/catalog/). The images were produced by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Technology Laboratory
(ETL) from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor
Microwave/Imager (SSM/I).  Images are available once per day.  The products cover the
period from 28 February 2001 to 4 May 2001 and cover the region from about 45S to 45N
and 0 to 180E.  The products were acquired from the NOAA/ETL
(http://www.etl.noaa.gov/satres/dmsp_game.html)  All images are in GIF format.


2.0  Data Contact

John Bates
NOAA/OAR/ETL
325 Broadway Street, Mailstop R/ET7
Boulder, CO  80305
Telephone: (303)497-6646
Email: John.J.Bates@noaa.gov


3.0  Product Information


The SSM/I data are provided courtesy of NOAA/NESDIS. SSM/I retrieved rainfall, cloud
liquid water, and integrated water vapor products are computed daily over the region from
45S to 45N and 180E to 0W at a spatial resolution of 0.25 x 0.25 degrees. Currently we are
receiving data from three SSM/I instruments, including DMSP F11, F13, and F14, providing 
us with nearly complete global daily coverage.

Weng cloud liqud water algorithm

This is an updated version of the operational cloud liquid water path retrieval algorithm
(Weng and Grody 1994; Weng et al 1996).


4.0  Quality Control Procedures


UCAR/JOSS conducted no quality checks on these data.


5.0  File Naming Convention


The file names are structured as follows:

dmsp.yyyymmdd.SSM-I_Cloud_Liquid_Water.gif

Where dmsp is the type of satellite used
      yyyy is the four digit year
      mm is the two digit month
      dd is the two digit day
      SSM-I_Cloud_Liquid_Water is the name of the product


6.0  References


Weng, F. and N. C. Grody, 1994: Retrieval of cloud liquid water
   using the special sensor microwave imager, J. Geophys. Res., Vol
   99, pp. 25,535.

Weng, F., N. C. Grody, R. R. Ferraro, A. Basist, and D. Forsyth,
   1996: Cloud liquid water climatology from the special sensor
   microwave imager, submitted to J. Climate.