Study of TOVS applications in monitoring atmospheric temperature,water vapor,and cloudiness in East Asia

Summary A new Statistical-Physical Retrieval Method (STPRM) has been developed for applications with TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS) measurements. The method uses physical modeling combined with statistical regression to develop straightforward retrieval expressions for temperature, moisture content, and tropopause height based on brightness temperature measurements from both the HIRS and MSU instruments used in the TOVS system. The selection of HIRS and MSU channels used in the various retrievals is based on channel sensitivity coefficients which relate to the amplitude of the change of a given channel's brightness temperature to a given change in a retrieval parameter. The temperature retrieval procedure is designed for all-weather situations, and emphasizes the use of MSU microwave channels including linear combinations of these channels to improve vertical resolution. Cloud parameters are retrieved using radiances from HIRS channels to generate clear column radiances for the moisture and tropopause height retrievals, which depend almost exclusively on the HIRS channels. The STPRM scheme is then used to obtain and evaluate distributions of temperature, mixing ratio, and tropopause height. Distributions of ozone content are also retrieved from an independent iterative retrieval procedure using the cloud corrected radiances from the STPRM scheme as input. The retrievals are compared to in situ measurements obtained from radiosonde observations and ground-based Dobson spectrometer measurements situated throughout East Asia with generally good results. The temperature retrievals are also used in a synoptic analysis of a winter storm situation that developed over northern China in January 1989, giving a geopotential height distribution which is confirmed by aerological observations.With 16 Figures