Diurnal cycle and seasonal variation of cloud cover over the Tibetan Plateau as determined from Himawari-8 new-generation geostationary satellite data.
Huazhe Shang, Husi Letu, Takashi Y Nakajima, Ziming Wang, Run Ma, Tianxing Wang, Yonghui Lei, Dabin Ji, Shenshen Li, Jiancheng Shi
Author Information
Huazhe Shang: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Husi Letu: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. husiletuw@hotmail.com.
Takashi Y Nakajima: Research and Information Center, Tokai University, Tokyo, Japan.
Ziming Wang: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Run Ma: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Tianxing Wang: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Yonghui Lei: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Dabin Ji: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Shenshen Li: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. lishenshen@126.com.
Jiancheng Shi: State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Analysis of cloud cover and its diurnal variation over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is highly reliant on satellite data; however, the accuracy of cloud detection from both polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites over this area remains unclear. The new-generation geostationary Himawari-8 satellites provide high-resolution spatial and temporal information about clouds over the Tibetan Plateau. In this study, the cloud detection of MODIS and AHI is investigated and validated against CALIPSO measurements. For AHI and MODIS, the false alarm rate of AHI and MODIS in cloud identification over the TP was 7.51% and 1.94%, respectively, and the cloud hit rate was 73.55% and 80.15%, respectively. Using hourly cloud-cover data from the Himawari-8 satellites, we found that at the monthly scale, the diurnal cycle in cloud cover over the TP tends to increase throughout the day, with the minimum and maximum cloud fractions occurring at 10:00 a.m. and 18:00 p.m. local time. Due to the limited time resolution of polar-orbiting satellites, the underestimation of MODIS daytime average cloud cover is approximately 4.00% at the annual scale, with larger biases during the spring (5.40%) and winter (5.90%).
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