scholarly journals Seasonal variations in brightness temperature for central Antarctica

1993 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 300-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J. Van Der Veen ◽  
K. C. Jezek

The radiative-transfer model developed by Zwally (1977) is modified and coupled to a one-dimensional time-dependent temperature model, to calculate the seasonal variation in brightness temperature. By comparing this with observed records, the radiative properties of firn can be determined. By retaining scattering as a source term in the radiative transfer function, agreement between model-derived scattering and absorption coefficients and those calculated from the Mie/Rayleigh scattering theory can be obtained. The horizontal brightness temperature is not linked to the vertical one through a constant power reflection coefficient.

1993 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 300-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J. Van Der Veen ◽  
K. C. Jezek

The radiative-transfer model developed by Zwally (1977) is modified and coupled to a one-dimensional time-dependent temperature model, to calculate the seasonal variation in brightness temperature. By comparing this with observed records, the radiative properties of firn can be determined. By retaining scattering as a source term in the radiative transfer function, agreement between model-derived scattering and absorption coefficients and those calculated from the Mie/Rayleigh scattering theory can be obtained. The horizontal brightness temperature is not linked to the vertical one through a constant power reflection coefficient.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Roy ◽  
Marion Leduc-Leballeur ◽  
Ghislain Picard ◽  
Alain Royer ◽  
Peter Toose ◽  
...  

Detailed angular ground-based L-band brightness temperature (TB) measurements over snow covered frozen soil in a prairie environment were used to parameterize and evaluate an electromagnetic model, the Wave Approach for LOw-frequency MIcrowave emission in Snow (WALOMIS), for seasonal snow. WALOMIS, initially developed for Antarctic applications, was extended with a soil interface model. A Gaussian noise on snow layer thickness was implemented to account for natural variability and thus improve the TB simulations compared to observations. The model performance was compared with two radiative transfer models, the Dense Media Radiative Transfer-Multi Layer incoherent model (DMRT-ML) and a version of the Microwave Emission Model for Layered Snowpacks (MEMLS) adapted specifically for use at L-band in the original one-layer configuration (LS-MEMLS-1L). Angular radiometer measurements (30°, 40°, 50°, and 60°) were acquired at six snow pits. The root-mean-square error (RMSE) between simulated and measured TB at vertical and horizontal polarizations were similar for the three models, with overall RMSE between 7.2 and 10.5 K. However, WALOMIS and DMRT-ML were able to better reproduce the observed TB at higher incidence angles (50° and 60°) and at horizontal polarization. The similar results obtained between WALOMIS and DMRT-ML suggests that the interference phenomena are weak in the case of shallow seasonal snow despite the presence of visible layers with thicknesses smaller than the wavelength, and the radiative transfer model can thus be used to compute L-band brightness temperature.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (18) ◽  
pp. 25730
Author(s):  
Wenwen Li ◽  
Feng Zhang ◽  
Yi-Ning Shi ◽  
Hironobu Iwabuchi ◽  
Mingwei Zhu ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 2338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liu ◽  
Chu ◽  
Yin ◽  
Liu

Accurate precipitation detection is one of the most important factors in satellite data assimilation, due to the large uncertainties associated with precipitation properties in radiative transfer models and numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. In this paper, a method to achieve remote sensing of precipitation and classify its intensity over land using a co-located ground-based radar network is described. This method is intended to characterize the O−B biases for the microwave humidity sounder -2 (MWHS-2) under four categories of precipitation: precipitation-free (0–5 dBZ), light precipitation (5–20 dBZ), moderate precipitation (20–35 dBZ), and intense precipitation (>35 dBZ). Additionally, O represents the observed brightness temperature (TB) of the satellite and B is the simulated TB from the model background field using the radiative transfer model. Thresholds for the brightness temperature differences between channels, as well as the order relation between the differences, exhibited a good estimation of precipitation. It is demonstrated that differences between observations and simulations were predominantly due to the cases in which radar reflectivity was above 15 dBZ. For most channels, the biases and standard deviations of O−B increased with precipitation intensity. Specifically, it is noted that for channel 11 (183.31 ± 1 GHz), the standard deviations of O−B under moderate and intense precipitation were even smaller than those under light precipitation and precipitation-free conditions. Likewise, abnormal results can also be seen for channel 4 (118.75 ± 0.3 GHz).


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Refet A. Yalçın ◽  
Hakan Ertürk

Inverse design of thickness sensitive spectrally selective pigmented coatings that are used in absorbers of solar thermal collectors is considered. The objective is to maximize collection efficiency by achieving high absorptance at solar wavelengths and low emittance at the infrared (IR) wavelengths to minimize heat loss. Radiative properties of these coatings depend on coating thickness, pigment size, concentration, and the optical properties of binder and pigment materials, and a unified radiative transfer model of the pigmented coatings is developed in order to understand the effect of these parameters on the properties. The unified model (UM) relies on Lorenz–Mie theory (LMT) for independent scattering regime in conjunction with extended Hartel theory (EHT) to incorporate the multiple scattering effects, T-matrix method (TMM) for dependent scattering, and effective medium theory (EMT) for very small particles. A simplified version of the UM (SUM) ignoring dependent scattering is also developed for improving computational efficiency. Through the solution of the radiative transfer equation by the four flux method (FFM), spectral properties are predicted. The developed model is used in conjunction with inverse design for estimating design variables yielding the desired spectral emittance of the ideal coating. The nonlinear inverse design problem is solved by optimization by using simulated annealing (SA) method that is capable of finding global minimum regardless of initial guess.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 2939
Author(s):  
Chang-Hwan Park ◽  
Thomas Jagdhuber ◽  
Andreas Colliander ◽  
Johan Lee ◽  
Aaron Berg ◽  
...  

An accurate radiative transfer model (RTM) is essential for the retrieval of soil moisture (SM) from microwave remote sensing data, such as the passive microwave measurements from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission. This mission delivers soil moisture products based upon L-band brightness temperature data, via retrieval algorithms for surface and root-zone soil moisture, the latter is retrieved using data assimilation and model support. We found that the RTM based on the tau-omega (τ-ω) model can suffer from significant errors over croplands in the simulation of brightness temperature (Tb) (in average between −9.4K and +12.0K for single channel algorithm (SCA); −8K and +9.7K for dual-channel algorithm (DCA)) if the vegetation scattering albedo (omega) is set constant and temporal variations are not considered. In order to reduce this uncertainty, we propose a time-varying parameterization of omega for the widely established zeroth order radiative transfer τ-ω model. The main assumption is that omega can be expressed by a functional relationship between vegetation optical depth (tau) and the Green Vegetation Fraction (GVF). Assuming allometry in the tau-omega relationship, a power-law function was established and it is supported by correlating measurements of tau and GVF. With this relationship, both tau and omega increase during the development of vegetation. The application of the proposed time-varying vegetation scattering albedo results in a consistent improvement for the unbiased root mean square error of 16% for SCA and 15% for DCA. The reduction for positive and negative biases was 45% and 5% for SCA and 26% and 12% for DCA, respectively. This indicates that vegetation dynamics within croplands are better represented by a time-varying single scattering albedo. Based on these results, we anticipate that the time-varying omega within the tau-omega model will help to mitigate potential estimation errors in the current SMAP soil moisture products (SCA and DCA). Furthermore, the improved tau-omega model might serve as a more accurate observation operator for SMAP data assimilation in weather and climate prediction model.


2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 430-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virendra P. Ghate ◽  
Mark A. Miller ◽  
Bruce A. Albrecht ◽  
Christopher W. Fairall

Abstract Stratocumulus-topped boundary layers (STBLs) observed in three different regions are described in the context of their thermodynamic and radiative properties. The primary dataset consists of 131 soundings from the southeastern Pacific (SEP), 90 soundings from the island of Graciosa (GRW) in the North Atlantic, and 83 soundings from the U.S. Southern Great Plains (SGP). A new technique that makes an attempt to preserve the depths of the sublayers within an STBL is proposed for averaging the profiles of thermodynamic and radiative variables. A one-dimensional radiative transfer model known as the Rapid Radiative Transfer Model was used to compute the radiative fluxes within the STBL. The SEP STBLs were characterized by a stronger and deeper inversion, together with thicker clouds, lower free-tropospheric moisture, and higher radiative flux divergence across the cloud layer, as compared to the GRW STBLs. Compared to the STBLs over the marine locations, the STBLs over SGP had higher wind shear and a negligible (−0.41 g kg−1) jump in mixing ratio across the inversion. Despite the differences in many of the STBL thermodynamic parameters, the differences in liquid water path at the three locations were statistically insignificant. The soundings were further classified as well mixed or decoupled based on the difference between the surface and cloud-base virtual potential temperature. The decoupled STBLs were deeper than the well-mixed STBLs at all three locations. Statistically insignificant differences in surface latent heat flux (LHF) between well-mixed and decoupled STBLs suggest that parameters other than LHF are responsible for producing decoupling.


2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 5427-5456
Author(s):  
A. Battaglia ◽  
C. Simmer ◽  
H. Czekala

Abstract. Consistent negative polarization differences (i.e. differences between the vertical and the horizontal brightness temperature) are observed when looking at precipitating systems by ground-based radiometers at slant angles. These signatures can be partially explained by one-dimensional radiative transfer computations that include oriented non-spherical raindrops. However some cases are characterized by polarization values that exceed differences expected from one-dimensional radiative transfer. A three-dimensional fully polarized Monte Carlo model has been used to evaluate the impact of the horizontal finiteness of rain shafts with different rain rates at 10, 19, and 30 GHz. The results show that because of the reduced slant optical thickness in finite clouds, the polarization signal can strongly differ from its one-dimensional counterpart. At the higher frequencies and when the radiometer is positioned underneath the cloud, significantly higher negative values for the polarization are found which are also consistent with some observations. When the observation point is located outside of the precipitating cloud, typical polarization patterns (with troughs and peaks) as a function of the observation angle are predicted. An approximate 1-D slant path radiative transfer model is considered as well and results are compared with the full 3-D simulations to investigate whether or not three-dimensional effects can be explained by geometry effects alone. The study has strong relevance for low-frequency passive microwave polarimetric studies.


2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 767-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Chen ◽  
Yong Han ◽  
Quanhua Liu ◽  
Paul Van Delst ◽  
Fuzhong Weng

Abstract To better use the Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) data for reanalysis and climate studies, issues associated with the fast radiative transfer (RT) model for SSU have recently been revisited and the results have been implemented into the Community Radiative Transfer Model version 2. This study revealed that the spectral resolution for the sensor’s spectral response functions (SRFs) calculations is very important, especially for channel 3. A low spectral resolution SRF results, on average, in 0.6-K brightness temperature (BT) errors for that channel. The variations of the SRFs due to the CO2 cell pressure variations have been taken into account. The atmospheric transmittance coefficients of the fast RT model for the Television and Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS)-N, NOAA-6, NOAA-7, NOAA-8, NOAA-9, NOAA-11, and NOAA-14 have been generated with CO2 and O3 as variable gases. It is shown that the BT difference between the fast RT model and line-by-line model is less than 0.1 K, but the fast RT model is at least two orders of magnitude faster. The SSU measurements agree well with the simulations that are based on the atmospheric profiles from the Earth Observing System Aura Microwave Limb Sounding product and the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry on the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics satellite. The impact of the CO2 cell pressures shift for SSU has been evaluated by using the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA) model profiles. It is shown that the impacts can be on an order of 1 K, especially for SSU NOAA-7 channel 2. There are large brightness temperature gaps between observation and model simulation using the available cell pressures for NOAA-7 channel 2 after June 1983. Linear fittings of this channel’s cell pressures based on previous cell leaking behaviors have been studied, and results show that the new cell pressures are reasonable. The improved SSU fast model can be applied for reanalysis of the observations. It can also be used to address two important corrections in deriving trends from SSU measurements: CO2 cell leaking correction and atmospheric CO2 concentration correction.


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