Advanced Baseline Sounder (ABS) for future Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES-R and beyond)

摘要

The Advanced Baseline Sounder (ABS), now named Hyperspectral Environmental Sounder (HES) is being designed for future Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (sarting with GOES-R in 2012). ABS/HES will have thousands of channels with widths on the order of single wavenumber, while the current GOES sounder has only 18 bands with widths on the order of tens of wavenumbers. With high temporal resolution (better than 1 hour), high spatial resolution (better than 10 km), high-spectral-resolution (better than single wavenumber) and broad coverage (hemispheric) ABS/HES measurements will enable monitoring the evolution of detailed temperature and moisture structures in clear skies with high accuracy (better than 1 C root mean square) and improved vertical resolution (about 1 km); the current GOES sounder yields roughly 3 km vertical resolution. Considerations for ABS/HES instrument definition are described. Temperature and moisture retrievals from simulated current GOES radiances and future ABS/HES radiances with required instrument noise contained were compared with the true profiles; results show the large improvement of ABS/HES moisture retrievals over the current GOES sounder. Trade-off studies are conducted to demonstrate the optimal spectral coverage of ABS/HES design and the impact of instrument noise on sounding retrieval.