Introduction to the NJIAS Himawari-8/9 cloud feature dataset for climate and typhoon research

Abstract. The use of remote sensing method to accurately measure cloud properties and their spatiotemporal changes has been widely welcomed in many fields of atmospheric research. The Nanjing Joint Institute for Atmospheric Sciences (NJIAS) Himawari-8/9 Cloud Feature Dataset (HCFD) provides a comprehensive description of cloud features over the East Asia and west North Pacific regions for the 7 yr period from April 2016 to December 2022. Multiple cloud variables, such as cloud mask, phase/type, top height, optical thickness, and particle effective radius, as well as snow, dust and haze masks, were generated from the visible and infrared measurements of the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard the Japanese geostationary satellites Himawari-8/9 using a series of cloud retrieval algorithms developed by Dr. Zhuge and his colleagues. Verifications with the Cloud–Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization 1-km cloud layer product and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Level-2 cloud product (MYD06) demonstrates that the NJIAS HCFD gives higher skill scores than the Japanese Himawari-8/9 operational cloud product for all cloud variables except for the particle effective radius. The NJIAS HCFD even outperforms the MYD06 in the nighttime continental cloud detection and the infrared-only cloud-top phase determination. Then, two application examples are presented, to demonstrate the use of the NJIAS HCFD for climate and typhoon research. The NJIAS HCFD has been published at the Science Data Bank (https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09950, Zhuge 2023a; https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09953, Zhuge 2023b; https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09954, Zhuge 2023c; https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.10158, Zhuge 2023d; https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.09945, Zhuge 2023e).