The Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS): Demonstrating New Techniques for Cloud and Aerosol Measurements

Abstract:

The Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) is an elastic backscatter lidar that provides vertical profiles of cloud and aerosol properties. The CATS payload has been operating since early February 2015 from the International Space Station (ISS). CATS was designed to operate for six months, and up to three years, providing a combination of operational science, in-space technology demonstration, and technology risk reduction for future Earth Science missions.

One of the primary project goals of CATS is to demonstrate technology in support of future space-based lidar mission development. The CATS instrument has been demonstrating the high repetition rate laser and photon counting detection approach to lidar observations, in contrast to the low repetition rate, high energy technique employed by CALIPSO. Due to this technique, cloud and aerosol profile data exhibit high spatial and temporal resolution, which was never before possible from a space-based platform. Another important science goal of the CATS-FO project is accurate determination of aerosol type on a global scale. CATS provided the first space-based depolarization measurements at multiple wavelengths (532 and 1064 nm), and first measurements at 1064 nm from space. The ratio of the depolarization measurements at these two wavelengths enables significant improvement in aerosol typing.

The CATS retrievals at 1064 nm also provide improvements to detecting aerosols above clouds. The CATS layer identification algorithm is a threshold-based layer detection method that uses the 1064 nm attenuated scattering ratio and also includes a routine to identify clouds embedded within aerosol layers. This technique allows CATS to detect the full extent of the aerosol layers above the cloud, and differentiate these two layers so that the optical properties can be more accurately determined.