Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
for measuring atmospheric water and temperature profiles with a twice-
daily, 1-2 km vertical, and 45 km horizontal resolutions. The accuracy of
the humidity and air temperature profiles derived from AIRS have been
recognized as improving forecasts from meteorological prediction models.
a
The advantages of using the AIRS in describing the air temperature and
moisture structures of the tropical Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) have
been demonstrated by a couple of studies.
13
, 2006). The
instruments carried by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)
satellites provide useful information of the tropical rain rate and SST. Also,
NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) offers the information of the
surface wind.
In general, the goal of this chapter is to reveal the role of
(Yang
et al.
in situ
hydrological cycle in driving the northward movement of the tropical
convection during the SCSSM onset by analyzing the three-dimensional
water vapor and the underlying air-sea interaction using the aforemen-
tioned satellite observations during 2003-2006.
2. Datasets
The level-3 AIRS data used in this study include the atmospheric
moisture and temperature profiles at 12 levels from 1000 to 100 hPa
with a spatially 1.0 degree longitude-latitude and a temporally twice-
daily resolutions since 1 August 2002. Detail description of this dataset
can be obtained at: http://disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/AIRS. In this chapter,
10-day mean data are constructed from the original twice-daily data.
We also used the 3-day running mean rain rate and SST observed by
the TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and surface wind observed by the
QuikSCAT. Both TMI rain rate, SST, and QuikSCAT wind have a
resolution of 0
25 longitude/latitude and the information is provided
at: http://www.ssmi.com. Other data used in this study include the daily
reanalysis of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)
and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and the global
surface and upper air analyses at the European Centre for Medium-Range
Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The later is a 2
25
0
.
×
.
5 degree grid output
from the ECMWF operational model provided through NCAR.
5
2
.
×
.
a
NOAA administrator Lautenbacher has reported that “the AIRS instrument has
provided the most significant increase in forecast improvement in this time range of
any other single instrument.” (http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/AIRS/).
