Synergistic retrieval and Complete Data Fusion methods applied to FORUM and IASI-NG simulated measurements

• Main Authors: Ridolfi, Marco, Tirelli, Cecilia, Ceccherini, Simone, Belotti, Claudio, Cortesi, Ugo, Palchetti, Luca
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2022-82; https://amt.copernicus.org/preprints/amt-2022-82/

In the frame of Earth observation remote sensing data analysis, Synergistic Retrieval (SR) and Complete Data Fusion (CDF) are techniques used to exploit the complementarity of the information carried by different measurements sounding the same air mass and / or ground pixel. While more difficult to implement due to the required simultaneous access to measurements originating from different instruments / missions, the SR method is sometimes preferred over the CDF method as the latter relies on a linear approximation of the retrieved states as functions of the true atmospheric and / or surface state. In this work, we study the performance of the SR and CDF techniques when applied to simulated measurements of the FORUM (Far-infrared Outgoing Radiation Understanding and Monitoring) and the IASI-NG (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer - New Generation) missions that will be operational in a few years, from two polar orbiting satellites. The study is based on synthetic measurements generated for the two missions, in clear-sky Antarctic atmospheres. The target parameters of the inversion are the vertical profiles of temperature, water vapour and ozone mixing ratios, surface temperature and spectral emissivity. We find that for exact matching of the measurements, the results of the SR and CDF techniques differ by less than 1/10 of their errors estimated trough the propagation of measurement noise. For measurements with a realistic mismatch in space and time, the two methods provide more different results. Still in this case, however, the differences between the results are within the error bars due to measurement noise. We conclude that, when applied to FORUM and IASI-NG missions, the two methods are equivalent from the accuracy point of view.