Comparisons of Clear-Sky Outgoing Far-IR Flux Inferred from Satellite Observations and Computed from the Three Most Recent Reanalysis Products

Abstract

Abstract The far-IR spectrum plays an important role in the earth’s radiation budget and remote sensing. The authors compare the near-global (80°S–80°N) outgoing clear-sky far-IR flux inferred from the collocated Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) observations in 2004 with the counterparts computed from reanalysis datasets subsampled along the same satellite trajectories. The three most recent reanalyses are examined: the ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim), NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Application (MERRA), and NOAA/NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR). Following a previous study by X. Huang et al., clear-sky spectral angular distribution models (ADMs) are developed for five of the CERES land surface scene types as well as for the extratropical oceans. The outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) directly estimated from the AIRS radiances using the authors’ algorithm agrees well with the OLR in the collocated CERES Single Satellite Footprint (SSF) dataset. The daytime difference is 0.96 ±2.02 W m−2, and the nighttime difference is 0.86 ±1.61 W m−2. To a large extent, the far-IR flux derived in this way agrees with those directly computed from three reanalyses. The near-global averaged differences between reanalyses and observations tend to be slightly positive (0.66%–1.15%) over 0–400 cm−1 and slightly negative (−0.89% to −0.44%) over 400–600 cm−1. For all three reanalyses, the spatial distributions of such differences show the largest discrepancies over the high-elevation areas during the daytime but not during the nighttime, suggesting discrepancies in the diurnal variation of such areas among different datasets. The composite differences with respect to temperature or precipitable water suggest large discrepancies for cold and humid scenes.