Abstract
Abstract. Satellite radiothermovision is a set of processing techniques applicable for multisource data of radiothermal monitoring of oceanatmosphere system, which allows creating dynamic description of mesoscale and synoptic atmospheric processes and estimating physically meaningful integral characteristics of the observed processes (like avdective flow of the latent heat through a given border). The approach is based on spatiotemporal interpolation of the satellite measurements which allows reconstructing the radiothermal fields (as well as the fields of geophysical parameters) of the ocean-atmosphere system at global scale with spatial resolution of about 0.125° and temporal resolution of 1.5 hour. The accuracy of spatiotemporal interpolation was estimated by direct comparison of interpolated data with the data of independent asynchronous measurements and was shown to correspond to the best achievable as reported in literature (for total precipitable water fields the accuracy is about 0.8 mm). The advantages of the implemented interpolation scheme are: closure under input radiothermal data, homogeneity in time scale (all data are interpolated through the same time intervals), automatic estimation of both the intermediate states of scalar field of the studied geophysical parameter and of vector field of effective velocity of advection (horizontal movements). Using this pair of fields one can calculate the flow of a given geophysical quantity though any given border. For example, in case of total precipitable water field, this flow (under proper calibration) has the meaning of latent heat advective flux. This opportunity was used to evaluate the latent heat flux though a set of circular contours, enclosing a tropical cyclone and drifting with it during its evolution. A remarkable interrelation was observed between the calculated magnitude and sign of advective latent flux and the intensity of a tropical cyclone. This interrelation is demonstrated in several examples of hurricanes and tropical cyclones of August, 2000, and typhoons of November, 2013, including super typhoon Haiyan.
Highlights
Progress in algorithms of retrieval of geophysical parameters from satellite passive microwave measurements provides accuracy which is appropriate for a wide range of applications of remote sensing of the Earth, see, e.g., (Wentz, 1997)
Following the procedure in (Wimmers and Velden, 2011) let us consider as a local measure of interpolation error the residual data δ in a given node, i.e. the absolute difference between the “actual” TPW value obtained from SSMIS F17 measurements and the closest in time interpolated TPW value originated from SSMIS F16 data
Calculated with the use of these velocity vectors flux of W through a given contour multiplied by a constant factor q = 2.26 MJ/kg has a sense of latent heat flux Q into or out of the area enclosed by the border with vertical sidewalls which projections on the Earth surface repeat the given contour
Summary
Progress in algorithms of retrieval of geophysical parameters from satellite passive microwave measurements provides accuracy which is appropriate for a wide range of applications of remote sensing of the Earth, see, e.g., (Wentz, 1997). The authors’ approach called “satellite radiothermovision” is built up of a set of algorithms (including creation of reference fields, spatiotemporal interpolation and estimation of physically meaningful integral characteristics) which form a closed scheme of satellite data processing applicable to investigation of a wide range of mesoscale (and synoptic) atmospheric processes. This concept is demonstrated on a case study of evolution of tropical cyclones (TC) in August, 2000, and November, 2013. Other important opportunities of the approach are briefly discussed in the concluding remarks
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