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Millimeter wave moisture sounding: The effect of clouds
Author(s) -
Isaacs Ronald G.,
Deblonde Godelieve
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
radio science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1944-799X
pISSN - 0048-6604
DOI - 10.1029/rs022i003p00367
Subject(s) - depth sounding , water vapor , environmental science , brightness temperature , radiative transfer , remote sensing , water content , moisture , millimeter , atmospheric sciences , atmospheric radiative transfer codes , brightness , extremely high frequency , meteorology , geology , physics , optics , oceanography , geotechnical engineering
The effect of water clouds on the retrieval of atmospheric water vapor profiles using simulated millimeter wave sounder data is investigated. Synthetic nadir brightness temperatures are evaluated for a five‐channel hypothetical millimeter wave moisture sounder (91.655 ± 1.25, 150.0 ± 1.25, 183.31 ± 1, 183.31 ± 3, and 183.31 ± 7 GHz) using an appropriate radiative transfer model. Clouds filling the field of view are shown to significantly distort the weighting functions for each channel. The effect of cloud on simulated brightness temperatures over ocean and dry land backgrounds is investigated by para‐metrically varying cloud liquid water content for two cloud types. In general, typical clouds increase brightness temperatures over the ocean and decrease them over land. By applying a simple statistical inversion method to obtain moisture profiles, it is demonstrated that cloud presence degrades the accuracy of water vapor profile retrievals performed in simulation over both land and ocean backgrounds.