A Limb Correction Method for the Microwave Temperature Sounder 2 and Its Applications

• Published in: Advances in atmospheric sciences Vol. 35; no. 12; pp. 1547 - 1552
• Main Authors: Tian, Xiaoxu, Zou, Xiaolei, Yang, Shengpeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Science Press 01.12.2018; Springer Nature B.V; Earth Science System Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20740, USA%joint Center for Data Assimilation Research and Applications, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210042, China
• Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences; Brightness temperature; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Extreme weather; Field of view; Geophysics/Geodesy; Hurricanes; Meteorological satellites; Meteorology; Methods; Original Paper; Radiometers; Temperature; Temperature effects; Typhoons; Water; Water temperature; Weather; Weather effects; 大气温度; Tropical cyclones; 微波温度探空; 临边效应更正; MWTS-2; 台风检测; Limb Correction; weather monitoring; 全球天气检测
• ISSN: 0256-1530; 1861-9533
• DOI: 10.1007/s00376-018-8092-8

The Microwave Temperature Sounder 2 (MWTS-2) is a cross-track radiometer that has 13 channels of sampling radiances emitted from different vertical levels of the atmosphere. Because of the varying scan angles of each field of view within a scan line, observations from the MWTS-2 are subject to strong scan-position-dependent features, i.e., the limb effect. When examining brightness temperatures (TBs), weather signals observed at every temperature-sounding channel are often concealed by scan-dependent patterns. This study, therefore, proposes a limb correction method to remove scan-dependent features so that the underlying weather signals can be uncovered. Limb-corrected TBs can be used to monitor large-scale patterns over the globe as well as extreme weather events such as typhoons. Limb-corrected TBs are also more correlated with atmospheric physical variables such as temperature and liquid water path.