Publication Date:
2016-10-19
Description:
The Microwave Radiometers (MWR) on-board ERS-1, ERS-2, and Envisat provide a continuous time series of brightness temperature observations between 1991 and 2012. Here we report on a new Total Column Water Vapour (TCWV) and Wet Tropospheric Correction (WTC) dataset that builds on this time series. We use a one-dimensional variational approach to derive TCWV from MWR observations and ERA-Interim background information. A particular focus of this study lies on the intercalibration of the three different instruments, which is performed using constraints on liquid water path (LWP) and TCWV. Comparing our MWR-derived time series of TCWV against TCWV derived from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) we find that the MWR-derived TCWV time series is stable over time. However, observations potentially affected by precipitation show a degraded performance compared to precipitation-free observations in terms of the accuracy of retrieved TCWV. An analysis of WTC shows further that the retrieved WTC is superior to purely model-derived WTC for all satellites and for the entire time series. Even compared to operational WTC retrievals, which incorporate additional observational data, the here-described dataset shows improvements in particular for the mid-latitudes and for the two earlier satellites ERS-1 and ERS-2. The dataset is publicly available under doi:10.5676/DWD_EMIR/V001.
Electronic ISSN:
1867-8610
Topics:
Geosciences