Construction and Radiosonde Verification of the MSU/AMSU Lower Tropospheric Temperature Record
Abstract
We review the methods of construction of the global lower tropospheric temperature record from multiple copies of the Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) and Advanced Microwave Sounding Units (AMSUs) flying on separate NOAA polar orbiting satellites. Particular attention will be given to the MSU adjustments for diurnal drift of the orbits, and crosstalk of instrument temperature into the measured brightness temperatures. Comparisons to different radiosonde datasets reveal not only excellent agreement with the resulting satellite record, but also the existence of documented changes in the radiosonde network, which affected the sondes average absolute accuracy. Construction of MSU-like channels from the new AMSU instruments will be discussed, as well as the AMSU's superior calibration and channel selection compared to the MSU.
- Publication:
-
AGU Spring Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002AGUSM.A42D..01C
- Keywords:
-
- 1610 Atmosphere (0315;
- 0325);
- 1620 Climate dynamics (3309);
- 1640 Remote sensing;
- 1694 Instruments and techniques