Observation system simulation experiment for a L-band microwave radiometer over rough bare soil site: A first step towards brightness temperature assimilation

Author(s):  
Bin Peng ◽  
Tianjie Zhao ◽  
Jiancheng Shi ◽  
Chuan Xiong ◽  
Yonghui Lei ◽  
...  
2011 ◽  
Vol 139 (8) ◽  
pp. 2309-2326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason A. Otkin ◽  
Daniel C. Hartung ◽  
David D. Turner ◽  
Ralph A. Petersen ◽  
Wayne F. Feltz ◽  
...  

AbstractIn this study, an Observing System Simulation Experiment was used to examine how the assimilation of temperature, water vapor, and wind profiles from a potential array of ground-based remote sensing boundary layer profiling instruments impacts the accuracy of atmospheric analyses when using an ensemble Kalman filter data assimilation system. Remote sensing systems evaluated during this study include the Doppler wind lidar (DWL), Raman lidar (RAM), microwave radiometer (MWR), and the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI). The case study tracked the evolution of several extratropical weather systems that occurred across the contiguous United States during 7–8 January 2008. Overall, the results demonstrate that using networks of high-quality temperature, wind, and moisture profile observations of the lower troposphere has the potential to improve the accuracy of wintertime atmospheric analyses over land. The impact of each profiling system was greatest in the lower and middle troposphere on the variables observed or retrieved by that instrument; however, some minor improvements also occurred in the unobserved variables and in the upper troposphere, particularly when RAM observations were assimilated. The best analysis overall was achieved when DWL wind profiles and temperature and moisture observations from the RAM, AERI, or MWR were assimilated simultaneously, which illustrates that both mass and momentum observations are necessary to improve the analysis accuracy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Feng ◽  
Yi Huang ◽  
Zhipeng Qu

Abstract. Measuring atmospheric conditions above convective storms is challenging. This study finds that the uncertainties in cloud properties near the top of deep convective clouds have a non-negligible impact on the TOA infrared radiances which cannot be fully eliminated by adopting a slab-cloud assumption. To overcome this issue, a synergetic retrieval method is developed. This method integrates the infrared hyperspectral observations with cloud measurements from active sensors to retrieve atmospheric temperature, water vapor, and cloud properties simultaneously. Using an observation system simulation experiment (OSSE), we found that the retrieval method is capable of detecting the spatial distribution of temperature and humidity anomalies above convective storms and reducing the root-mean-square-errors in temperature and column integrated water vapor by more than half.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (14) ◽  
pp. 6699-6709 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Huang ◽  
A. Gasiewski ◽  
W. Wiscombe

Abstract. Part 1 of this research concluded that many conditions of the 2003 Wakasa Bay experiment were not optimal for the purpose of tomographic retrieval. Part 2 (this paper) then aims to find possible improvements to the mobile cloud tomography method using observation system simulation experiments. We demonstrate that the incorporation of the L1 norm total variation regularization in the tomographic retrieval algorithm better reproduces discontinuous structures than the widely used L2 norm Tikhonov regularization. The simulation experiments reveal that a typical ground-based mobile setup substantially outperforms an airborne one because the ground-based setup usually moves slower and has greater contrast in microwave brightness between clouds and the background. It is shown that, as expected, the error in the cloud tomography retrievals increases monotonically with both the radiometer noise level and the uncertainty in the estimate of background brightness temperature. It is also revealed that a lower speed of platform motion or a faster scanning radiometer results in more scan cycles and more overlap between the swaths of successive scan cycles, both of which help to improve the retrieval accuracy. The last factor examined is aircraft height. It is found that the optimal aircraft height is 0.5 to 1.0 km above the cloud top. To summarize, this research demonstrates the feasibility of tomographically retrieving the spatial structure of cloud liquid water using current microwave radiometric technology and provides several general guidelines to improve future field-based studies of cloud tomography.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Luo ◽  
X. Feng ◽  
P. Houser ◽  
V. Anantharaj ◽  
X. Fan ◽  
...  

Abstract. Using an observing system simulation experiment (OSSE), we investigate the potential soil moisture retrieval capability of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aquarius radiometer (L-band 1.413 GHz) and scatterometer (L-band, 1.260 GHz). We estimate potential errors in soil moisture retrievals and identify the sources that could cause those errors. The OSSE system includes (i) a land surface model in the NASA Land Information System, (ii) a radiative transfer and backscatter model, (iii) a realistic orbital sampling model, and (iv) an inverse soil moisture retrieval model. We execute the OSSE over a 1000 × 2200 km2 region in the central United States, including the Red and Arkansas river basins. Spatial distributions of soil moisture retrieved from the radiometer and scatterometer are close to the synthetic truth. High root mean square errors (RMSEs) of radiometer retrievals are found over the heavily vegetated regions, while large RMSEs of scatterometer retrievals are scattered over the entire domain. The temporal variations of soil moisture are realistically captured over a sparely vegetated region with correlations 0.98 and 0.63, and RMSEs 1.28% and 8.23% vol/vol for radiometer and scatterometer, respectively. Over the densely vegetated region, soil moisture exhibits larger temporal variation than the truth, leading to correlation 0.70 and 0.67, respectively, and RMSEs 9.49% and 6.09% vol/vol respectively. The domain-averaged correlations and RMSEs suggest that radiometer is more accurate than scatterometer in retrieving soil moisture. The analysis also demonstrates that the accuracy of the retrieved soil moisture is affected by vegetation coverage and spatial aggregation.


Author(s):  
Xiaoqing Pi ◽  
Chunming Wang ◽  
George A. Hajj ◽  
Gary Rosen ◽  
Brian D. Wilson ◽  
...  

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