HR: 08:30h
AN: H31A-03    [PDF]
TI: Atmospheric Soundings from AIRS/AMSU/HSB
AU: * Susskind, J
EM: Joel.Susskind-1@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Mail Code 910.4, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Atlas, R
EM: robert.m.atlas@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Mail Code 910.4, Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AB: AIRS was launched on EOS Aqua on May 5, 2002, together with AMSU A and HSB, to form a next generation polar orbiting infrared and microwave atmospheric sounding system. The primary products of AIRS/AMSU/HSB are twice daily global fields of atmospheric temperature-humidity profiles, ozone profiles, sea/land surface skin temperature, and cloud related parameters including OLR. The sounding goals of AIRS are to produce 1 km tropospheric layer mean temperatures with an RMS error of 1K, and 1 km layer precipitable water with an RMS error of 20 percent, in cases with up to 80 percent cloud cover. The AIRS data products are significant for studying climate variability and change, as well as for use in initialization of General Circulation Models with the objective of improving analysis fields and subsequent forecast skill. Data assimilation experiments to evaluate the impact of AIRS retrievals on analysis and forecast skill are being conducted. Sample fields of parameters retrieved from AIRS/AMSU/HSB data will be presented and validated as a function of fractional cloud cover. Select fields will also be compared to those contained in the ECMWF analysis, done without the benefit of AIRS data, on both an instantaneous and monthly mean basis, to demonstrate information that AIRS can add to that already contained in the ECMWF analysis.
DE: 0350 Pressure, density, and temperature
DE: 1610 Atmosphere (0315, 0325)
DE: 1899 General or miscellaneous
DE: 3337 Numerical modeling and data assimilation
DE: 3360 Remote sensing
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting