Assessing climate interannual variability from NOAA sounders: preliminary comparisons of 1988 versus 1987

摘要

The NOAA polar low earth orbit operational satellites carry HIRS2/MSU instruments and thus have thermal and microwave remote sensing capability. The measurements have been processed for retrieval of surface and atmospheric meteorological parameters using a version of the Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheres (GLA) interactive forecast-retrieval-analysis system. This interactive approach has properties that make it desirable for derivation of climate data sets, because it provides for accurate treatment of the effects of clouds on the IR radiances and elimination of some systematic errors form the retrieved quantities. The use of the microwave MSU cloud-penetrating wavelengths adds significantly to the remote sensing capabilities for the retrievals, as it allows for use of thermal data under partial cloud cover as high as 80%. Interannual differences of atmospheric temperatures derived from HIRS2/MSU on NOAA 10 show good quantitive agreement with values obtained from radiosonde reports. As part of the TOVS Pathfinder program, the retrieval system will be frozen to produce a 15 year (1979 - 1994) set of satellite-derived surface and atmospheric parameters. Data for the years 1986, 1987, and 1988 based on the current retrieval analysis are now available.