Application of Infrared Hyperspectral Sounder Data to Climate Research: Interannual Variability and climate trend evaluation.

Satellite measurements of the spectrally resolved upwelling infrared radiances have a unique role in the observation of climate and climate change: They give direct insight into the way the Earth Climate System responds to periodic and long term changes in forcing with changes in surface and atmospheric temperatures and changes in large scale atmospheric circulation patterns. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the first in a series of hyper-spectral polar orbiting sounders, was launch on the EOS Aqua into a 1:30 pm polar orbit at 705 km altitude in May 2002, with an anticipated lifetime of 12 years. The Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) was launched in October 2006 into a 9:30 AM orbit, to be followed by the Crosstrack InfraRed Sounder (CRIS) in a 2 PM orbit in 2010. The AIRS radiometric stability since 2002 has been verified at the better than 0.01 K/year level. We report on observations of the oceans between 30S and 30N. The 0.05 K/year trend in co2 sensitive channels due to the 2 ppmv/year increase in the co2 column abundance is readily detectable and statistically reliable. The AIRS data show very consistent seasonal modulations of key surface, cloud, water vapor and atmospheric temperatures. After removing the seasonal variation, the anomaly shows interannual rms variability in the monthly means larger than 0.1 K. The rms variability in the monthly means in the mid- tropospheric temperature with peak excursions as large as 0.6 K are observed by the AIRS 2388 cm-1 channel and AMSU channel 5 at 57 GHz. The interannual variability is not obviously correlated with the Multivariate Enso Index (MEI). This variability places limits on the length of time required to measure global warming trends at the 0.1 K/decade level. These limits exceed the expected 12 year lifetime of AIRS and need to be taken into account in the design of space missions and instruments to measure climate change.