When will MISR detect rising high clouds?

In this article we show that the current MISR record does have an increase in CTH for high-altitude cloud over Southern Hemisphere (SH) oceans but not over Tropical or the Northern Hemisphere (NH) oceans. We use climate model simulations to estimate when MISR might be expected to detect trends in CTH, that include the NH. The analysis suggests that according to the models used in this study MISR should detect changes over the SH ocean earlier than the NH, and if the model predictions are correct should be capable of detecting a trend over the Tropics and NH very soon (3-10 years).

This result highlights the potential value of a follow-on mission to MISR, which no longer maintains a fixed equator crossing time and is unlikely to be making observations for another 10 years.