Supplimentary Data: Representativity of Cloud-Profiling Radar Observations for Data Assimilation in Numerical Weather Prediction

The data published here were used in the research paper titled "Representativity of Cloud-Profiling Radar Observations for Data Assimilation in Numerical Weather Prediction".

The atmospheric data were simulated with Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Global Environmental Multiscale (GEM) NWP model (Côté et al. 1998; Girard et al. 1998; Milbrandt et al. 2016) for the purpose of testing cloud and aerosol retrieval algorithms for the EarthCARE satellite mission (Illingworth et al. 2015). The horizontal grid-spacing of the model is 0.25 km with 57 vertical levels. Two frames are available (Halifax and Pacific) with a size of 200 x 6200 km for each frame. 

In addition to the data from GEM, the Cloud Feedback Model Intercomparison Project (CFMIP) Observation Simulator Package (COSP ) produced 94-GHz reflectivities commensurate with CloudSat’s CPR for each of GEM’s 0.25 km columns (Haynes et al. 2007; Bodas-Salcedo et al. 2011). 

Due to the low frequency of radiative transfer calculation in GEM, the top of atmosphere (TOA) upward flux were recalculated with RRTMG radiative transfer model (Clough et al. 2005) based on the atmospheric properties from GEM's simulation. 

The data are stored in netCDF format. The available variables are:

2D cloud mask: vertically integrated cloud mask;

3D cloud mask: cloud mask for each model level;

Flux: includes the top of atmosphere upward VIS and IR flux (W m-2);

Height: height (m) for each model level;

Latitude: latitude (deg) for horizontal grids;

Longitude: longitude (deg) for horizontal grids;

Reflectivity: COSP simulated radar reflectivity. The vertical heights are different form the vertical levels of original GEM simulation. Please refer to the variable "altitude" within the radar reflectivity netCDF file for more details.