Signatures of Annual and Seasonal Variations of CO2and Other Greenhouse Gases from Comparisons between NOAA TOVS Observations and Radiation Model Simulations

Abstract

Abstract Since 1979, sensors on board the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) series of polar meteorological satellites have provided continuous measurements of the earth's surface and atmosphere. One of these sensors, the Television Infrared Observational Satellite (TIROS-N) Operational Vertical Sounder (TOVS), observes earth-emitted radiation in the infrared—with the High-Resolution Infrared Sounder (HIRS)—and in the microwave—with the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU)—portions of the spectrum. The NOAA and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Pathfinder program was designed to make these data more readily accessible to the community in the form of processed geophysical variables (temperature, water vapor, cloud characteristics, and so on) through the “interpretation” of the infrared and microwave radiances. All presently developed interpretation algorithms more or less directly rely on the comparison between a set of observed and a set of simulated radiances. For that rea...