Jonathan Jiang

and 4 more

Clouds play a significant role in the Earth’s energy balance and hydrological cycle through their effects on radiation and precipitation, and therefore are crucial for life on Earth. Earth’s NexT‐generation ICE mission (ENTICE) is proposed to measure diurnally resolved global vertical profiles of cloud ice particle size, ice water content, and in-cloud humidity and temperature using multi-frequency sub-millimeter (sub-mm) microwave radiometers and a 94 GHz cloud radar from space. The scientific objective of ENTICE is to identify the important processes by which anvil clouds evolve and interact with ambient thermodynamic conditions to advance our fundamental understanding of clouds and reduce uncertainties in cloud climate feedback. Whether such an objective could be achieved depends on the orbital sampling characteristics of the mission. In this study, ENTICE sampling statistics are simulated using five different scanning methods in a 400 km altitude precession orbit with an inclination of 65°: nadir, forward pointing, side scanning, and conical scanning for the radiometers, and nadir pointing for the radar. Using the GEOS-5 Nature Run produced at 7-km and 30-min resolution, sampling statistics with respect to cloud types and local hours with enhancement from radar are calculated for ENTICE. The wide swath of ENTICE radiometers by conical and side scanning methods ensures ample high cloud samples gathered by ENTICE over its two-year mission for different types of clouds with sufficient sampling over the diurnal cycles. Sampling differences between radar and radiometers at nadir demonstrate that the combination of radar and radiometers will allow for measurements of cloud vertical profiles. Therefore, our results show that the designed orbit sampling of ENTICE is sufficient to fulfill the mission science goals.