The Effect of Clouds on Air Showers Observation from Space

Abstract

Issues relating to extensive air showers observation by a space-borne fluorescence detector and the effects of clouds on the observations are investigated using Monte Carlo simulation. The simulations assume the presence of clouds with varying altitudes and optical depths. Simulated events are reconstructed assuming a cloud-free atmosphere. While it is anticipated that auxiliary instruments, such as LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging), will be employed to measure the atmospheric conditions during actual observation, it is still possible that these instruments may fail to recognize the presence of a cloud in a particular shower observation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects on the reconstructed shower parameters in such cases. Reconstruction results are shown for both monocular and stereo detectors and for the two limiting cases of optically thin, and optically thick clouds.

arXiv comment31 pages, 13 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Energy Estimation of UHE Cosmic Rays using the Atmospheric Fluorescence Technique
• A Comparative Study of the Depth of Maximum of Simulated Air Shower Longitudinal Profiles

Cited by in corpus (5)

• An evaluation of the exposure in nadir observation of the JEM-EUSO mission
• Observing the Ultrahigh Energy Universe with OWL Eyes
• Acceptances for Space-Based and Ground-Based Fluorescence Detectors, and Inference of the Neutrino-Nucleon Cross-Section above 10^19 eV
• The observation of Extensive Air Showers from an Earth-Orbiting Satellite
• Thin and thick cloud top height retrieval algorithm with the Infrared Camera and LIDAR of the JEM-EUSO Space Mission