Retrieval of ice water path from the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MWHS) aboard FengYun-3B (FY-3B) satellite polarimetric measurements based on a deep neural network

Abstract

Abstract. The ice water path (IWP) is an important cloud parameter in atmospheric radiation, and there are still great difficulties in its retrieval. Artificial neural networks have become a popular method in atmospheric remote sensing in recent years. This study presents a global IWP retrieval based on deep neural networks using the measurements from the Microwave Humidity Sounder (MWHS) aboard the FengYun-3B (FY-3B) satellite. Since FY-3B/MWHS has quasi-polarization channels at 150 GHz, the effect of the polarimetric radiance difference (PD) was also studied. A retrieval database was established using collocations between MWHS and CloudSat 2C-ICE (CloudSat and CALIPSO Ice Cloud Property Product). Then, two types of networks were trained for cloud scene filtering and IWP retrieval. For the cloud filtering network, the microwave channels show a capacity with a false alarm ratio (FAR) of 0.31 and a probability of detection (POD) of 0.61. For the IWP retrieval network, different combination inputs of auxiliaries and channels were compared. The results show that the five MWHS channels combined with scan angle, latitude, and the ocean/land mask of inputs of auxiliary variables perform best. Applying the cloud filtering network and IWP retrieval network, the final root mean squared error (RMSE) is 916.76 g m−2, the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) is 92 %, and the correlation coefficient (CC) is 0.65. Then, a tropical cyclone case measured simultaneously by MWHS and CloudSat was chosen to test the performance of the networks, and the result shows a good correlation (0.73) with 2C-ICE. Finally, the global annual mean IWP of MWHS is very close to that of 2C-ICE, and the 150 GHz channels give a significant improvement in the midlatitudes compared to using only 183 GHz channels.