Vertical Inhomogeneity Effect of Frozen Hydrometeor Habits in All‐Sky Passive Microwave Simulations

Abstract

AbstractIn this study, we attempted to address the frozen hydrometeor habit vertical inhomogeneity (FHHVI) effects on microwave radiative transfer simulations. For simplification, we focused on a “two habits and two layers” FHHVI scheme in which two different ice habits can be assumed to be above and below a fixed habit boundary line of 325 hPa as suggested by studies of tropical cyclone vertical structure. The aforementioned FHHVI scheme was implemented into a radiative transfer for the Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) operational vertical sounder (RTTOV), which allows for close examination of the FHHVI effect on the radiative transfer process. Four scenarios (thin plate, dendrite, thin plate over dendrite, and dendrite over thin plate) were considered in the simulations at frequencies ranging from 10 to 183 GHz. We found that FHHVI has an obvious impact on the brightness temperature (BT) simulations. For real case studies, we considered the 2018 tropical cyclone Jebi in the Western Pacific basin. The hydrometeor profiles forecasted by the Global/Regional Assimilation and Prediction System (GRAPES) regional numerical weather prediction (NWP) model were used, and the simulated results were compared with observations from the instruments aboard on the Fengyun‐3D satellite, which recorded 61 overpasses during the life span of typhoon Jebi. We found that the overall performance of the BT simulations over multichannels could be improved by considering FHHVI effects. Specifically, the total penalty values that quantify the spectral consistency were 63.05 (dendrite), 43.88 (thin plate), 46.23 (dendrite over thin plate), and 39.03 (thin plate over dendrite), respectively.