Regional And Mesoscale Meteorology Team
Daily Satellite Discussion
Monday November 17, 1997
Figure 2 is the corresponding 10.7 micron image, which gives a good estimate of cloud top temperature for thick clouds like the deck over Texas. The color table has been rolled such that yellow and red are above freezing, and purple is below freezing. The color bar on the bottom of the image shows the colors and their corresponding 10.7 micron brightness temperature in degrees Celsius. In this case, the northern parts of the cloud top are below freezing, showing a supercooled area of the cloud top which may be hazardous to airplane travel. The rest is above freezing, so supercooled droplets at cloud top are not a factor.
For more information on supercooled cloud detection, see RAMM's 3.9 micron tutorial.