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Assimilation of surface‐sensitive infrared radiances over land: Estimation of land surface temperature and emissivity
Author(s) -
Pavelin E. G.,
Candy B.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.2218
Subject(s) - emissivity , environmental science , depth sounding , atmospheric infrared sounder , remote sensing , infrared , troposphere , data assimilation , radiance , numerical weather prediction , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , geology , geography , physics , optics , oceanography
Whilst the assimilation of radiances from infrared sounding spectrometers such as the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer ( IASI ) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder ( AIRS ) over the sea is well established, observations over land have, until recently, only been assimilated at wavelengths insensitive to the surface. This was due to uncertainties in the infrared emissivity and skin temperature of the land. A method is described for analyzing the land surface emissivity spectrum in terms of its principal components in order to allow the assimilation of land‐sensitive IASI channels and the results of the implementation of this scheme in an operational numerical weather prediction ( NWP ) system are presented. The use of additional IASI data over land resulted in small improvements in global NWP skill, mainly affecting near‐surface temperature and mid‐tropospheric water vapour fields.