Objective
Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) relies on the quality and frequency of the observations that are combined with a model background field to generate the initial conditions. Data from satellites have become an integral and very important part of the initialisation of NWP models. As much of the globe is covered with water only satellites can offer world wide data coverage. The accuracy of modern weather forecasts is greatly influenced by the quality of the vertical profiles of temperature and humidity which are used as input data. Current satellite instruments like HIRS (High Resolution Infra-Red Sounder) have provided the world wide community with a reliable source of profile data with a vertical resolution of around 4km. Modern advances in computing power and instrument development have paved the way for future instruments with enhanced spectral resolution to provide us with profiles with vertical resolution around lkm which is expected to significantly enhance the ability of NWP centres around the world to produce accurate forecasts. Such an instrument, IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer), is a moderate resolution (0.25 cm-1) Fourier Transform spectrometer scheduled for flight in 2002 on the European METOP satellite (funded by the EUMETSAT and ESA member states). This instrument is intended to replace HIRS as the operational infra-red sounder. IASI provides more spectral channels at considerably higher spectral resolution than HIRS, which is expected to lead to improvement in the accuracy and height resolution of remotely sensed temperature and humidity profiles and ozone amount. The flight instruments are being jointly developed by CNES and EUMETSAT.
Our customers, the UKMO NWP Division, ECMWF, EUMETSAT, CNES and the ISSWG (IASI Sounding Science Working Group), require temperature profiles with an accuracy of lK and a vertical resolution of lkm, with a similar requirement for humidity. These requirements can only be met if our understanding of atmospheric spectroscopy is good enough; currently it is not and improvements must be made. These will lead to the more accurate fast radiative transfer models needed to obtain the required accuracies in the atmospheric profile measurements.
It is the aim of the research described in this proposal to further our understanding of the radiative transfer and atmospheric spectroscopy through a series of ground and airborne measurements. These data will be made available to the atmospheric science and NWP communities to enable them to enhance their profile retrievals. As an integral part of the proposal one particular retrieval scheme will be validated as an example of the improvements expected to be available in the future. Our customers, along with the global community of NWP centres, will have full access to our results, which we believe will form an important component to the global effort being put into improving Earth Observation through enhanced instrumentation.
In this proposal, an existing airborne Fourier Transform Spectrometer will be used as a simulator for IASI. The achieve its objectives, the proposal involves the following steps:
1. Quality control and careful calibration of the measured signal through intercomparison with other similar instruments and calibration targets; 2. Flight test measurements with the airborne system in dedicated campaigns with supporting in-situ and active remotely-sensed measurements; 3. Detailed line-by-line radiative transfer model comparison and experimental laboratory spectroscopy to provide verification of the basic spectroscopic assumptions and the modelling schemes;
4. Fast forward modelling and derivation of retrieval procedures for key quantities.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences atmospheric sciences meteorology
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering vehicle engineering aerospace engineering satellite technology
- natural sciences physical sciences optics spectroscopy
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Coordinator
GU14 0LX Farnborough
United Kingdom
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