Assessing the value of Microwave Sounding Unit–radiosonde comparisons in ascertaining errors in climate data records of tropospheric temperatures
نویسندگان
چکیده
[1] Multidecadal-scale changes in atmospheric temperature have been measured by both radiosondes and the satellite-borne microwave sounding unit (MSU). Both measurement systems exhibit substantial time varying biases that need to removed to the extent possible from the raw data before they can be used to assess climate trends. A number of methods have been developed for each measurement system, leading to the creation of several homogenized data sets. In this work, we evaluate the agreement between MSU and homogenized radiosonde data sets on multiyear (predominantly 5-year) time scales and find that MSU data sets are often more similar to each other than to radiosonde data sets and vice versa. Furthermore, on these times scales the differences between MSU data sets are often not larger than published internal uncertainty estimates for the RSS product alone and therefore may not be statistically significant when the internal uncertainty in each data set is taken into account. Given the data limitations it is concluded that using radiosondes to validate multidecadal-scale trends in MSU data, or vice versa, or trying to use such metrics alone to pick a ‘winner’ is an ill-conditioned approach and has limited utility without one or more of additional independent measurements, or methodological, or physical analysis.
منابع مشابه
Utility of radiosonde wind data in representing climatological variations of tropospheric temperature and baroclinicity in the western tropical Pacific
The utility of the thermal wind equation (TWE) in relating tropospheric (850 to 300 hPa) wind and temperature on climatological time scales is assessed, based on data from 59 radiosonde stations in the western tropical Pacific during 1979-2004. Observed longterm mean and seasonal variations closely obey geostrophic balance; incorporating additional (ageostrophic) terms yields negligible improve...
متن کاملTemporal Homogenization of Monthly Radiosonde Temperature Data. Part II: Trends, Sensitivities, and MSU Comparison
Trends in radiosonde-based temperatures and lower-tropospheric lapse rates are presented for the time periods 1959–97 and 1979–97, including their vertical, horizontal, and seasonal variations. A novel aspect is that estimates are made globally of the effects of artificial (instrumental or procedural) changes on the derived trends using data homogenization procedures introduced in a companion p...
متن کاملRobustness of Tropospheric Temperature Trends from MSU Channels 2 and 4
Tropospheric temperature trends based on Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) channel 2 data are susceptible to contamination from strong stratospheric cooling. Recently, Fu et al. devised a method of removing the stratospheric contamination by linearly combining data from MSU channels 2 and 4. In this study the sensitivity of the weights of the two channels in the retrieval algorithm for the troposph...
متن کاملStable Long-Term Retrieval of Tropospheric Temperature Time Series from the Microwave Sounding Unit
Climatological time-series of tropospheric temperatures from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) are potentially of great value in validating observations of climate change due to their excellent spatial and temporal coverage. However, the long-term trend signal is small relative to natural seasonal and inter-annual variability and inter-satellite biases, and is comparable to diurnal temperature ...
متن کاملChannel frequency shifts , dr ifts and uncertainities in microwave sounding observations
Observations from microwave sounding instruments have been exploited widely for numerical weather prediction (NWP) and for climate studies assessing long-term trends in atmospheric temperatures. Observations from channels in the 50-58 GHz range have been particularly valuable in providing information on tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures and are currently one of the most beneficial obs...
متن کامل