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Clear-sky biases in satellite infrared estimates of upper tropospheric humidity and its trends

John, V.O., Holl, G., Allan, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0264-9447, Buehler, S.A., Parker, D.E. and Soden, B.J. (2011) Clear-sky biases in satellite infrared estimates of upper tropospheric humidity and its trends. Journal of Geophysical Research, 116. D14108. ISSN 0148-0227

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To link to this item DOI: 10.1029/2010JD015355

Abstract/Summary

We use microwave retrievals of upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) to estimate the impact of clear-sky-only sampling by infrared instruments on the distribution, variability and trends in UTH. Our method isolates the impact of the clear-sky-only sampling, without convolving errors from other sources. On daily time scales IR-sampled UTH contains large data gaps in convectively active areas, with only about 20-30 % of the tropics (30 S­ 30 N) being sampled. This results in a dry bias of about -9 %RH in the area-weighted tropical daily UTH time series. On monthly scales, maximum clear-sky bias (CSB) is up to -30 %RH over convectively active areas. The magnitude of CSB shows significant correlations with UTH itself (-0.5) and also with the variability in UTH (-0.6). We also show that IR-sampled UTH time series have higher interannual variability and smaller trends compared to microwave sampling. We argue that a significant part of the smaller trend results from the contrasting influence of diurnal drift in the satellite measurements on the wet and dry regions of the tropics.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS
Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO)
ID Code:21843
Publisher:American Geophysical Union

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