Biases in total precipitable water vapor climatologies from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer

Fetzer, Eric J.; Lambrigtsen, Bjorn; Eldering, A.; Aumann, Hartmut H.; Chahine, Moustafa T.

doi:10.1029/2005jd006598

Cited by 97 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…In a comparison with Vaisala operational radiosondes over sea/ocean, Fetzer et al (2003) showed biases from −4 to 4 % for AIRS water vapour retrievals of the ∼ 2 km layer between the surface and 500 hPa. Also over (identical) ocean scenes, observational biases generally less than 5 % in IWV were found by Fetzer et al (2006), who compared the IWV observations of AIRS and AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer -EOS, on board Aqua). A validation over land of AIRS retrievals of IWVs (version 4) by measurements of more than 375 GPS receivers over the continental USA (from April to October 2004) is described in Rama Varma Raja et al (2008).…”

Section: Airsmentioning

confidence: 94%

A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

et al. 2014

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Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. On one hand, networks of groundbased instruments able to retrieve homogeneous integrated water vapour (IWV) data sets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ years, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 years (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2).This study performs an intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess their use in water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites world-wide for which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. The mean biases of the different techniques compared to the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV. Nevertheless these small biases are accompanied by large standard deviations (SD), especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of clouds on the IWV agreement. The influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is also investigated (e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences). Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. For all considered instruments, the only dependency clearly detected is with latitude: the SD of the IWV observations with respect to the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

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Section: Airsmentioning

confidence: 94%

A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

et al. 2014

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“…The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), on the NASA Aqua satellite, provides profiles of atmospheric temperature, water vapour, and a number of trace gas species including ozone, using a nadir cross-track scanning infrared instrument with a 15-km field of view (Fetzer et al, 2006). Here we use Version 5 (V005) of the AIRS standard level 2 ozone products (Olsen et al, 2007a, b), obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data Information and Services Center (http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/AIRS/ data-holdings/by-data-product/data products.shtml).…”

Section: Campaign Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Transport analysis of ozone enhancement in Southern Ontario during BAQS-Met

Tarasick

Hocking

et al. 2011

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. Twice-daily ozonesondes were launched from Harrow, in southwestern Ontario, Canada, during the BAQSMet (Border Air Quality and Meteorology Study) field campaign in June and July of 2007. A co-located radar windprofiler measured tropopause height continuously. These data, in combination with continuous surface ozone measurements and geo-statistical interpolation of satellite ozone observations, present a consistent picture and indicate that a number of significant ozone enhancements in the troposphere were observed that were the result of stratospheric intrusion events. The combined observations have also been compared with results from two Environment Canada numerical models, the operational weather prediction model GEM (as input to FLEXPART), and a new version of the regional air quality model AURAMS, in order to examine the ability of these models to accurately represent sporadic crosstropopause ozone transport events. The models appear to reproduce intrusion events with some skill, implying that GEM dynamics (which also drive AURAMS) are able to represent such events well. There are important differences in the quantitative comparison, however; in particular, the poor vertical resolution of AURAMS around the tropopause causes it to bring down too much ozone in individual intrusions.Correspondence to: H. He (huixia.he@ec.gc.ca) These campaign results imply that stratospheric intrusions are important to the ozone budget of the mid-latitude troposphere, and appear to be responsible for much of the variability of ozone in the free troposphere. GEM-FLEXPART calculations indicate that stratospheric ozone intrusions contributed significantly to surface ozone on several occasions during the BAQS-Met campaign, and made a moderate but significant contribution to the overall tropospheric ozone budget.

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“…Global TPW can be derived from satellite visible, infrared, and microwave sensors (i.e., Wentz and Spencer, 1998;Fetzer et al, 2006;John and Soden, 2007;Fetzer et al, 2008;Noël et al, 2004). However, no single remote sensing technique is capable of completely fulfilling the needs for climate studies in terms of spatial and temporal coverage and accuracy.…”

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confidence: 99%

Comparison of global observations and trends of total precipitable water derived from microwave radiometers and COSMIC radio occultation from 2006 to 2013

Liang

Mears

et al. 2018

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

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Abstract. We compare atmospheric total precipitable water (TPW) derived from the SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwave Imager) and SSMIS (Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder) radiometers and WindSat to collocated TPW estimates derived from COSMIC (Constellation System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate) radio occultation (RO) under clear and cloudy conditions over the oceans from June 2006 to December 2013. Results show that the mean microwave (MW) radiometer -COSMIC TPW differences range from 0.06 to 0.18 mm for clear skies, from 0.79 to 0.96 mm for cloudy skies, from 0.46 to 0.49 mm for cloudy but non-precipitating conditions, and from 1.64 to 1.88 mm for precipitating conditions. Because RO measurements are not significantly affected by clouds and precipitation, the biases mainly result from MW retrieval uncertainties under cloudy and precipitating conditions. All COSMIC and MW radiometers detect a positive TPW trend over these 8 years. The trend using all COSMIC observations collocated with MW pixels for this data set is 1.79 mm decade −1 , with a 95 % confidence interval of (0.96, 2.63), which is in close agreement with the trend estimated by the collocated MW observations (1.78 mm decade −1 with a 95 % confidence interval of 0.94, 2.62). The sample of MW and RO pairs used in this study is highly biased toward middle latitudes (40-60 • N and 40-65 • S), and thus these trends are not representative of global average trends. However, they are representative of the latitudes of extratropical storm tracks and the trend values are approximately 4 to 6 times the global average trends, which are approximately 0.3 mm decade −1 . In addition, the close agreement of these two trends from independent observations, which represent an increase in TPW in our data set of about 6.9 %, are a strong indication of the positive water vapor-temperature feedback on a warming planet in regions where precipitation from extratropical storms is already large.

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Biases in total precipitable water vapor climatologies from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer

Cited by 97 publications

References 36 publications

A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

Transport analysis of ozone enhancement in Southern Ontario during BAQS-Met

Comparison of global observations and trends of total precipitable water derived from microwave radiometers and COSMIC radio occultation from 2006 to 2013

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