Sensitivity Analysis of Microwave Spectrometer for Atmospheric Temperature and Humidity Sounding on the New Generation Fengyun Satellite

Abstract

The vertical profiles, spatiotemporal distribution, and trends of temperature and humidity in the middle atmosphere are significant for numerical weather prediction and the analysis of global climate change. To better design and apply spaceborne microwave spectrometer on the new generation Fengyun satellite, the sensitivities of the spectrometers at 22.235, 50–60, 118.75, 183.31, 325.153, 380.33, 424.77, 448.0, and 556.94 GHz are analyzed, respectively. Qpack2 included in the atmospheric radiative transfer simulator is used. The results show that the retrieval accuracy of the 50.0–60.0 GHz spectrometer is obviously better than other spectrometers, and the effective detection height (EDH) is the highest, reaching 0.233 hPa. The humidity profiles bigger than 500 hPa are well detected by the seven channels of the Humidity and Temperature Profiler or 22.0–32.0 GHz spectrometer. The retrieval accuracy is better than 6%, which greatly improves the retrieval performance of humidity profiles in the lower troposphere over the sea. In addition, this frequency band is not affected by errors in sea surface temperature or wind speed. The humidity profiles over the sea and land in the middle atmosphere under clear-sky and cloudy-sky conditions are well detected by the 183.31 and 556.94 GHz spectrometer. The EDH can be increased to 1.14 hPa by the 556.94 GHz spectrometer. In the design and application of future spaceborne microwave spectrometers for temperature and humidity profiles detection, the spectrometers mentioned previously are good candidates, and the parameter configuration of these spectrometers can be used as a reference.

Keywords

• Effective detection height (EDH)
• information content
• middle atmosphere
• retrieval accuracy
• spaceborne spectrometer
• temperature and humidity profiles