Corrections for Geostationary Cloud Liquid Water Path Using Microwave Imagery

Geostationary observations provide measurements of the in-cloud liquid water path (LWP), permitting continuous observation of cloud evolution through the daylit portion of the diurnal cycle. Unfortunately, these observations have biases related to scattering geometry, which systematically varies throughout the day. Therefore, we develop a set of bias corrections using LWP derived from microwave imagery for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-16 and GOES-17) observations of LWP derived using retrieved cloud-optical properties. The bias corrections are defined using scattering geometry (solar zenith, sensor zenith, and relative azimuth) and low-cloud fraction. Over the low-cloud regions of the northeast and southeast Pacific, we demonstrate that these bias corrections drastically improve characteristics of the retrieved LWP including its regional distribution, diurnal variation, and evolution along short-time-scale Lagrangian trajectories.