An Assessment of the Differential Inversion Method for Remote Sounding of Temperatures

Abstract

Abstract We have explored the applicability of the differential inversion (DI) method to temperature retrievals in both clear and cloudy atmospheres using red satellite data. The main theme of the DI is that the local Planck intensity can be exactly expressed by a linear combination of the derivatives of radiances in the logarithmic pressure coordinate. The inversion coefficients are obtained by fitting the weighting function to a generalized form. The higher-order derivatives of radiances are determined from polynomial fittings. The satellite dataset used in this work contains collocated brightness temperatures and radiosonde data that have been collected during the period of Baseline Upper Atmospheric Network (BUAN) experiments. These data include both cloudy and clear cases. A multispectral cloud-removal method using the principle of the N* method has been developed. This method uses radiances of High-Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder channels 6, 7, and 8 to estimate clear radiances of these channe...