Community Radiative Transfer Model for Stratospheric Sounding Unit

Abstract

AbstractTo better use the Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU) data for reanalysis and climate studies, issues associated with the fast radiative transfer (RT) model for SSU have recently been revisited and the results have been implemented into the Community Radiative Transfer Model version 2. This study revealed that the spectral resolution for the sensor’s spectral response functions (SRFs) calculations is very important, especially for channel 3. A low spectral resolution SRF results, on average, in 0.6-K brightness temperature (BT) errors for that channel. The variations of the SRFs due to the CO2 cell pressure variations have been taken into account. The atmospheric transmittance coefficients of the fast RT model for the Television and Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS)-N, NOAA-6, NOAA-7, NOAA-8, NOAA-9, NOAA-11, and NOAA-14 have been generated with CO2 and O3 as variable gases. It is shown that the BT difference between the fast RT model and line-by-line model is less than 0.1 K, but the fast RT model is at least two orders of magnitude faster. The SSU measurements agree well with the simulations that are based on the atmospheric profiles from the Earth Observing System Aura Microwave Limb Sounding product and the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry on the Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics satellite. The impact of the CO2 cell pressures shift for SSU has been evaluated by using the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) International Reference Atmosphere (CIRA) model profiles. It is shown that the impacts can be on an order of 1 K, especially for SSU NOAA-7 channel 2. There are large brightness temperature gaps between observation and model simulation using the available cell pressures for NOAA-7 channel 2 after June 1983. Linear fittings of this channel’s cell pressures based on previous cell leaking behaviors have been studied, and results show that the new cell pressures are reasonable. The improved SSU fast model can be applied for reanalysis of the observations. It can also be used to address two important corrections in deriving trends from SSU measurements: CO2 cell leaking correction and atmospheric CO2 concentration correction.