Bastiaan van Diedenhoven

• PhD
• Senior Scientist at Netherlands Institute for Space Research

Clouds and response to aerosols constitute the largest uncertainty in our understanding of 20th century climate change. We present an investigation that determines linkages between remotely‐sensed marine cloud properties with in situ measurements of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and meteorological properties obtained during the North Atlantic Aer...

We provide a parameterization of the extinction efficiency, single scattering albedo and asymmetry parameter of single ice crystals with any combination of particle volume, projected area, component aspect ratio and crystal distortion at any wavelength between 0.2 and 100 μm. The paramerization is an extension of the one previously published by van...

The sizes and shapes of ice crystals in clouds affect fundamental microphysical processes, such as sedimentation and aggregation, as well as their optical properties. The evolution of ice crystal size and shape depends on temperature and supersaturation, as well as on other processes that may lead to various coexisting complex shapes. Here we prese...

Plain Language Summary The sizes and shapes of ice crystals in cold clouds influence how these clouds evolve and how much sunlight they reflect. Ice crystal shapes and sizes are affected by numerous interacting physical processes. A better understanding on the relative importance of each of these processes is key to improve the representation of ic...

A framework to infer volume water fraction, soluble fraction and dry size distributions of fine-mode aerosol from multi-angle, multi-spectral polarimetry retrievals of column-averaged ambient aerosol properties is presented. The method is applied to observations of the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) obtained during two NASA aircraft campaigns,...

The NASA Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) conducted 162 joint flights with two aircraft over the northwest Atlantic to study aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI), which represent the largest uncertainty in estimating total anthropogenic radiative forcing. The combination of a high-flying King Air an...

Cloud optical thickness (COT) retrieved from airborne and satellite nadir-view measurements can be seriously underestimated if 3D radiative effects are not taken into account. This happens when retrievals for isolated or broken clouds are based on 1D radiative transfer computations (such as the widely used bispectral technique). In our previous wor...

Plain Language Summary Aerosols are small particles in the atmosphere, that affect the climate by reflecting and absorbing sun light (aerosol‐radiation interactions) and by changing the properties of clouds (aerosol‐cloud interactions). The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud and ocean Ecosystem satellite was successfully launched on 8 February 2024, carrying...

Improving parameterizations of convective microphysics in Earth system models (ESMs) requires well-constrained cases suitable for scaling between cloud-resolving models and ESMs. We propose a benchmark large eddy simulation (LES) cumulus congestus case study from the NASA Cloud, Aerosol, and Monsoon Processes Philippines Experiment (CAMP2Ex) and de...

3D effects cause substantial underestimation of cloud optical thickness (COT) in airborne and satellite retrievals based on 1D radiative transfer computations (such as in the case of widely used bispectral technique). For a single-layer isolated cloud we propose a simple linear correction of the retrieved COT with the renormalization factor depende...

This paper describes a neural network cloud masking scheme from PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar) multi-angle polarimetric measurements. The algorithm has been trained on synthetic measurements and has been applied to the processing of 1 year of PARASOL data. Compari...

Coupled atmosphere and ocean remote sensing retrievals of aerosol, cloud, and oceanic phytoplankton microphysical properties, such as those carried out by the NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, involve single-scattering calculations that are time consuming. Lookup tables (LUTs) exist to speed up these calculations for ae...

This paper describes a neural network cloud masking scheme from PARASOL (Polarisation and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar) Multi-Angle Polarimetric measurements. The algorithm has been trained on synthetic measurements and has been applied to the processing of one year of PARASOL data. Compa...

The NASA Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) produced a unique dataset for research into aerosol–cloud–meteorology interactions, with applications extending from process-based studies to multi-scale model intercomparison and improvement as well as to remote-sensing algorithm assessments and advance...

We describe the PACE-MAPP algorithm that simultaneously retrieves aerosol and ocean optical parameters using multiangle and multispectral polarimeter measurements from the SPEXone, Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter 2 (HARP2), and Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) instruments onboard the NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) observing sys...

The NASA Aerosol Cloud meTeorology Interactions oVer the western ATlantic Experiment (ACTIVATE) produced a unique dataset for research into aerosol-cloud-meteorology interactions with applications extending from process-based studies to multi-scale model intercomparison and improvement, and remote sensing algorithm assessments and advancements. ACT...

The NASA Cloud, Aerosol, and Monsoon Processes Philippines Experiment (CAMP ² Ex) employed the NASA P-3, Stratton Park Engineering Company (SPEC) Learjet 35, and a host of satellites and surface sensors to characterize the coupling of aerosol processes, cloud physics, and atmospheric radiation within the Maritime Continent’s complex southwest monso...

For a hyperangular imaging polarimeter like HARP (compared to heritage atmospheric imagers like MODIS) the number of solar geometries per pixel of observations is significantly greater because of its wide-field of view swath – but also particularly because each hyperangular observation constitutes its own pushbroom images. For a single granule of d...

This paper provides the theoretical basis and simulated retrievals for the Cloud Height Retrieval from O2 Molecular Absorption (CHROMA) algorithm. Simulations are performed for the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), which is the primary payload on the forthcoming NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, and the Ocean Land Colour In...

For aerosol, cloud, land, and ocean remote sensing, the development of accurate cloud detection methods, or cloud masks, is extremely important. For airborne passive remotesensing, it is also important to identify when clouds are above the aircraft since their presence contaminates the measurements of nadir-viewing passive sensors. We describe the...

Combined lidar and polarimeter retrievals of aerosol, cloud, and ocean microphysical properties involve single-scattering cloud calculations that are time consuming. We create a look-up table to speed up these calculations for water droplets in the atmosphere. In our new Lorenz–Mie look-up table we tabulate the light scattering by an ensemble of ho...

This paper provides the theoretical basis and simulated retrievals for the Cloud Height Retrieval from O2 Molecular Absorption (CHROMA) algorithm. Simulations are performed for the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), which is the primary payload on the forthcoming NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission, and the Ocean Land Colour In...

A framework to infer volume water fraction, soluble fraction and dry size distributions of fine mode aerosol from multi-angle, multi-spectral polarimetry retrievals of column-averaged ambient aerosol properties is presented. The method is applied to observations of the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) obtained during two NASA aircraft campaigns,...

In support of the Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring (CO2M) mission, this study evaluates the performance of the Remote sensing of Trace gas and Aerosol Product (RemoTAP) algorithm based on synthetic orbit measurements of realistic atmospheric and geophysical scenes over land. To make use of the added value of the multi-angle polari...

The cloud drop effective radius (Re) of the drop size distribution derived from passive satellite sensors is a key variable used in climate research. Validation of these satellite products has often taken place under stratiform cloud conditions that favor the assumption of cloud horizontal homogeneity used by the retrieval techniques. However, many...

In this study, we propose a simple method to derive vertically resolved aerosol particle number concentration (N a ) using combined polarimetric and lidar remote sensing observations. This method relies on accurate polarimeter retrievals of the fine-mode column-averaged aerosol particle extinction cross section and accurate lidar measurements of ve...

Per the 2017–2027 Decadal Survey for Earth Science and Applications from Space, many resources are being dedicated to identifying the most cost-effective and appropriate space-based approaches to aid in answering important questions related to the roles of aerosols, clouds, convection, and precipitation within the climate system. This includes deve...

This study develops the use of spectral total and diffuse irradiance measurements, made from a prototype hyperspectral total-diffuse sunshine pyranometer (SPN-S), to retrieve layer fine-mode aerosol (τaer) and total optical depths from airborne platforms. Additionally, we use spectral analysis in an attempt to partition the total optical depth into...

The cloud drop effective radius, Re, of the drop size distribution derived from passive satellite sensors is a key variable used in climate research. Validation of these satellite products often took place in stratiform cloud conditions that favored the assumption of cloud horizontal homogeneity used by the retrieval techniques. However, many studi...

The Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) is an airborne along-track scanner measuring the polarized and total reflectances in 9 spectral channels. The RSP was a prototype for the Aerosol Polarimetery Sensor (APS) launched on-board the NASA Glory satellite. Currently the retrieval algorithms developed for the RSP are being adopted for the measurement...

This study develops the use of spectral total and diffuse irradiance measurements, made from a prototype hyperspectral total-diffuse Sunshine Pyranometer (SPN-S), to retrieve layer fine-mode aerosol (τaer) and total optical depths from airborne platforms. Additionally, we use spectral analysis in an attempt to partition the total optical depth it i...

We quantify the performance of aerosol and ocean remote sensing products from the PolCube instrument using a previously developed polarimeter retrieval algorithm based on optimal estimation. PolCube is a modified version of the PolCam lunar instrument on the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter that has been optimized for Earth-Science observations of ae...

Drizzle is a common feature of warm stratiform clouds and it influences their radiative effects by modulating their physical properties and lifecycle. An important component of drizzle formation are processes that lead to a broadening of the droplet size distribution (DSD). Here, we examine observations of cloud and drizzle properties retrieved usi...

This study presents a new algorithm that combines W-band reflectivity measurements from the Airborne Precipitation Radar – third generation (APR-3) passive radiometric cloud optical depth and effective radius retrievals from the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) to estimate total liquid water path in warm clouds and identify the contributions fro...

The Western North Atlantic Ocean (WNAO) and adjoining East Coast of North America are of great importance for atmospheric research and have been extensively studied for several decades. This broad region exhibits complex meteorological features and a wide range of conditions associated with gas and particulate species from many sources regionally a...

Microphysical properties of cloud droplets and ice crystals, such as their size distributions, concentration, shape and thermodynamic phase, largely determine cloud evolution and radiative properties. Uncertainties related to processes that govern the variation in cloud microphysical properties are at the heart of our inability to sufficiently cons...

The Twomey effect describes the radiative forcing associated with a change in cloud albedo due to an increase in anthropogenic aerosol emissions. It is driven by the perturbation in cloud droplet number concentration (ΔNd,ant) in liquid-water clouds and is currently understood to exert a cooling effect on climate. The Twomey effect is the key drive...

In the fall of 2017, an airborne field campaign was conducted from the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, to advance the remote sensing of aerosols and clouds with multi-angle polarimeters (MAP) and lidars. The Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL) campaign was jointly sponsored by NASA and the Net...

This study presents a new algorithm that combines W-band reflectivity measurements from the Airborne Precipitation Radar-3rd generation (APR-3), passive radiometric cloud optical depth and effective radius retrievals from the Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) to estimate total liquid water path in warm clouds and identify the contributions from c...

Abstract In the atmosphere, microphysics refers to the microscale processes that affect cloud and precipitation particles and is a key linkage among the various components of Earth's atmospheric water and energy cycles. The representation of microphysical processes in models continues to pose a major challenge leading to uncertainty in numerical we...

Using collocated NASA’s Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) and Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) data from the Studies of Emissions and Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC4RS) campaign, a new observational-based method was developed which uses a K-means clustering technique to classify ice crystal habit types int...

In this study we developed a neural network (NN) that can be used to retrieve cloud microphysical properties from multiangular and multispectral polarimetric remote sensing observations. This effort builds upon our previous work, which explored the sensitivity of neural network input, architecture, and other design requirements for this type of rem...

Abstract. The Twomey effect describes the radiative forcing associated with a change in cloud albedo due to an increase in anthropogenic aerosol emissions. It is driven by the perturbation in cloud droplet number concentration (Δ N _d,ant) in liquid-water clouds and is currently understood to exert a cooling effect on climate. The Twomey...

Abstract. In the fall of 2017, an airborne field campaign was conducted from the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California to advance the remote sensing of aerosols and clouds with Multi-angle Polarimeters (MAP) and Lidars. The Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL) campaign was jointly sponsored by NASA an...

The Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) is an airborne along-track scanner measuring the polarized and total reflectances with high angular resolution. It allows for accurate characterization of liquid water cloud droplet sizes using the rainbow structure in the polarized reflectance. RSP's observations also provide constraints on the cumulus cloud...

In this study we developed a neural network (NN) that can be used to relate a large dataset of multi-angular and multi-spectral polarimetric remote sensing observations to retrievals of cloud microphysical properties. This effort builds upon our previous work, which explored the sensitivity of neural network input, architecture, and other design re...

The total effect of aerosols, both directly and on cloud properties, remains the biggest source of uncertainty in anthropogenic radiative forcing on the climate. Correct characterization of intensive aerosol optical properties, particularly in conditions where absorbing aerosol is present, is a crucial factor in quantifying these effects. The south...

Cloud droplet number concentration (Nd) is an important parameter of liquid clouds and is crucial to under-standing aerosol-cloud interactions. It couples boundary layer aerosol composition, size and concentration with cloud reflectivity. It affects cloud evolution, precipitation, radiative forcing, global climate and, through observation, can be u...

This paper describes a neural network algorithm for the estimation of liquid water cloud optical properties from the Polarization and Directionality of Earth's Reflectances-3 (POLDER-3) instrument aboard the Polarization & Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Sciences coupled with Observations from a Lidar (PARASOL) satellite. The algorithm h...

The total effect of aerosols, both directly and on cloud properties, remains the biggest source of uncertainty in anthropogenic radiative forcing on the climate. Correct characterization of intensive aerosol optical properties, particularly in conditions where absorbing aerosol is present, is a crucial factor in quantifying these effects. The South...

In early 2013, three airborne polarimeters were flown on the high altitude NASA ER-2 aircraft in California for the Polarimeter Definition Experiment (PODEX). PODEX supported the pre-formulation NASA Aerosol–Cloud–Ecosystem (ACE) mission, which calls for an imaging polarimeter in polar orbit (among other instruments) for the remote sensing of aeros...

This paper describes a neural network algorithm for the estimation of liquid water cloud optical properties from the Polarization and Directionality of Earth's Reflectances-3 (POLDER-3) instrument, on board the Polarization & Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Sciences coupled with Observations from a Lidar (PARASOL) satellite. The algorith...

The cloud droplet number concentration (Nd) is of central interest to improve the understanding of cloud physics and for quantifying the effective radiative forcing by aerosol‐cloud interactions. Current standard satellite retrievals do not operationally provide Nd, but it can be inferred from retrievals of cloud optical depth (τc) cloud droplet ef...

We present an optimal-estimation-based retrieval framework, the microphysical aerosol properties from polarimetry (MAPP) algorithm, designed for simultaneous retrieval of aerosol microphysical properties and ocean color bio-optical parameters using multi-angular total and polarized radiances. Polarimetric measurements from the airborne NASA Researc...

Ice crystals in clouds exist in a virtually limitless variation of geometries. The most basic shapes of ice crystals are columnar or plate-like hexagonal prisms with aspect ratios determined by relative humidity and temperature. However, crystals in ice clouds generally display more complex structures owing to aggregation, riming and growth histori...

In this paper, an algorithm for the retrieval of aerosol and land surface properties from airborne spectropolarimetric measurements – combining neural networks and an iterative scheme based on Phillips–Tikhonov regularization – is described. The algorithm – which is an extension of a scheme previously designed for ground-based retrievals – is appli...

Cloud top height (CTH) affects the radiative properties of clouds. Improved CTH observations will allow for improved parameterizations in large-scale models and accurate information on CTH is also important when studying variations in freezing point and cloud microphysics. NASA's airborne Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) is able to measure cloud...

Cloud top height (CTH) affects the radiative properties of clouds. Improved CTH observations will allow for improved parameterizations in large-scale models and accurate information on CTH is also important when studying variations in freezing point and cloud microphysics. NASA’s airborne Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) is able to measure cloud...

Abstract Supercooled liquid water (SLW) clouds, where liquid droplets exist at temperatures below 0°C present a well-known aviation hazard through aircraft icing, in which SLW accretes on the airframe. SLW clouds are common over the Southern Ocean, and climate-induced changes in their occurrence is thought to constitute a strong cloud feedback on g...

We demonstrate that multi-angle polarization measurements in the near-UV and blue part of the spectrum are very well suited for passive remote sensing of aerosol layer height. For this purpose we use simulated measurements with different set-ups (different wavelength ranges, with and without polarization, different polarimetric accuracies) as well...

A novel technique is used to estimate derivatives of ice effective radius with respect to height near convective cloud tops (dre/dz) from airborne shortwave reflectance measurements and lidar. Values of dre/dz are about -6 μm/km for cloud tops below the homogeneous freezing level, increasing to near 0 μm/km above the estimated level of neutral buoy...

Single-crystal images collected in mid-latitude cirrus are analyzed to provide internally consistent ice physical and optical properties for a size-resolved cloud microphysics model, including single-particle mass, projected area, fall speed, capacitance, single-scattering albedo, and asymmetry parameter. Using measurements gathered during two flig...

The use of ensemble-average values of aspect ratio and distortion parameter of hexagonal ice prisms for the estimation of ensemble-average scattering asymmetry parameters is evaluated. Using crystal aspect ratios greater than unity generally leads to ensemble-average values of aspect ratio that are inconsistent with the ensemble-average asymmetry p...

Polarimetric observations of snow surfaces, obtained in the 410–2264 nm range with the Research Scanning Polarimeter onboard the NASA ER-2 high-altitude aircraft, are analyzed and presented. These novel measurements are of interest to the remote sensing community because the overwhelming brightness of snow plagues aerosol and cloud retrievals based...

We investigated the importance of spectral range and angular resolution for aerosol retrieval from multiangle photopolarimetric measurements over land. For this purpose, we use an extensive set of simulated measurements for different spectral ranges and angular resolutions and subsets of real measurements of the airborne Research Scanning Polarimet...

The primary goal of this project has been to investigate if ground-based visible and near-infrared passive radiometers that have polarization sensitivity can determine the thermodynamic phase of overlying clouds, i.e., if they are comprised of liquid droplets or ice particles. While this knowledge is important by itself for our understanding of the...

The variation of ice crystal properties in the tops of deep convective clouds off the north coast of Australia is analyzed. Cloud optical thickness, ice effective radius, aspect ratio of ice crystal components, crystal distortion parameter and asymmetry parameter are simultaneously retrieved from combined measurements of the Moderate-resolution Ima...

A parameterization is presented that provides extinction cross section (σe), single-scattering albedo (ω) and asymmetry parameter (g) of ice crystals for any combination of volume, projected area, aspect ratio and crystal distortion at any wavelength in the shortwave. Similar to previous parameterizations, the scheme makes use of geometric optics a...

A fundamental problem in remote sensing and radiative transfer simulations involving ice clouds is the ability to compute accurate optical properties for individual ice particles. While relatively simple and intuitively appealing, the conventional geometric-optics method (CGOM) is used frequently for the solution of light scattering by ice crystals...

A new method to retrieve ice cloud asymmetry parameters from multi-directional polarized reflectance measurements is applied to measurements of the airborne Research Scanning Polarimeter (RSP) obtained during the CRYSTAL-FACE campaign in 2002. The method assumes individual hexagonal ice columns and plates serve as proxies for more complex shapes an...

Satellite measurements are used to evaluate the glaciation, particle shape, and effective radius in cloudresolving model simulations of tropical deep convection. Multidirectional polarized reflectances constrain the ice crystal geometry and the thermodynamic phase of the cloud tops, which in turn are used to calculate nearinfrared reflectances so a...