AOS Applications Seminar: How NASA's Spaceborne Active Sensors Have Contributed to Operational NOAA 3D Cloud Products for Aviation

The radar and lidar onboard CloudSat and CALIPSO have provided a decade and a half of joint observations of the vertical structure of clouds, aerosols, and precipitation in the atmosphere. These are research missions, but measurements from these instruments have contributed significantly to operational products through more indirect pathways. This work examines how historic spaceborne radar and lidar data have been used to add "depth" to the mostly cloud-top information provided by operational passive sensors like the GOES Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and JPSS Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), specifically through contributions to NOAA's Cloud Base Height and Cloud Cover Layers products. Applications that will be discussed include development of passive sensor-based cloud vertical cross sections for Alaska pilots operating in challenging terrain, as well as experimental global 3D gridded cloud products for aviation. The use of active sensor data to train a machine learning model to determine the presence of low-levels clouds in ABI/VIIRS scenes will also be discussed.