Continuity and consistency of geophysical retrieval products obtained from different Earth-observing spaceborne or airborne atmospheric multispectral imagers can be challenging due to inherent differences in the instruments and/or the use of different retrieval algorithms. The Cross-platform HIgh resolution Multi-instrument AtmosphEric Retrieval Algorithms (CHIMAERA) system addresses the latter aspect of the inter-sensor continuity problem for cloud property retrievals by removing retrieval methodology and implementation as a source of inconsistency when applied to instruments that share common measurement capabilities.

Transferring an existing retrieval algorithm to a new sensor oftentimes is a nontrivial task, as it is common for an algorithm code to be tightly coupled to the sensor for which it was developed. By creating a clear division between the science algorithm and the instrument I/O codes, CHIMAERA allows easy migration of science algorithms to different sensors. CHIMAERA is built from C and FORTRAN source code, and can operate in a variety of environments ranging from a personal laptop to a high-performance computing environment for near real-time satellite data production. It is highly adaptable, low-maintenance and allows for easy expansion such that adding new instruments into the system requires only instrument-specific I/O and provision of any external lookup tables specific to the instrument's spectral characteristics.

CHIMAERA currently officially supports 13 spaceborne and airborne atmospheric imagers from a single code base, and has been in use since 2007. This paper describes the engineering aspects of CHIMAERA and a few examples from its many current applications are briefly discussed.

由于仪器固有的差异和/或使用不同的检索算法，从不同的地球观测星载或机载大气多光谱成像仪获得的地球物理检索产品的连续性和一致性可能具有挑战性。跨平台高解析度多仪器大气检索算法（CHIMAERA）系统通过删除检索方法并避免将其应用到共享共同测量的仪器中作为不一致的来源，从而解决了云属性检索的传感器间连续性问题的后一个方面能力。

将现有的检索算法转移到新传感器上通常不是一件容易的事，因为将算法代码紧密耦合到为其开发传感器的传感器是很常见的。通过在科学算法和仪器I / O代码之间建立清晰的区分，CHIMAERA可以轻松地将科学算法移植到不同的传感器。CHIMAERA是基于C和FORTRAN源代码构建的，可以在从个人笔记本电脑到高性能计算环境的各种环境中运行，以进行近乎实时的卫星数据生产。它具有高度适应性，低维护性，并且易于扩展，因此，向系统中添加新仪器仅需要特定于仪器的I / O，并提供针对仪器光谱特性的任何外部查找表。

CHIMAERA目前从一个代码库开始正式支持13个星空和机载大气成像仪，并且自2007年以来一直在使用。本文介绍了CHIMAERA的工程设计方面，并简要讨论了其许多当前应用中的一些示例。