1 Calibration of Temperature in the Lower Stratosphere from Microwave Measurements using COSMIC Radio Occultation Data: Preliminary Results

• Main Authors: Shu-peng Ho, Mitch Goldberg, Ying-hwa Kuo, Cheng-zhi Zou, William Schreiner
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.563.4486

Accurate, consistent, and stable observations from different satellite missions are crucial for climate change detection. In this study, we use Global Positioning System (GPS) Radio Occultation (RO) data from the early phase of the FORMOSAT-3/Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC) mission, which was successfully launched on 15 April 2006, to inter-calibrate Temperature in the Lower Stratosphere (TLS) taken from Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) microwave measurements from different satellites for potential improvements of stratospheric temperature trend analysis. With a limited number of COSMIC soundings in the early phase of the mission, these results are considered preliminary. In this study, we use COSMIC RO data to simulate microwave brightness temperatures, for comparison with AMSU Ch9 measurements (e.g., TLS) on board NOAA15, 16 and 18. Excellent correlation was found between synthetic COSMIC brightness temperatures (Tbs) and Tbs from NOAA15, NOAA16 and NOAA18, respectively. However, systematic differences on the order of 0.7 K to 2 K were found between COSMIC and AMSU observations over Antarctica. Our results demonstrate that synthetic COSMIC Tbs are very useful in identifying inter-satellite offsets among AMSU measurements from different satellites. To demonstrate the long-term stability of GPS RO data, we compare COSMIC dry temperature profiles to those from collocated CHAMP profiles, where CHAMP was launched in 2001. The fact that the CHAMP and COSMIC dry temperature difference