A simulation-experiment-based assessment of retrievals of above-cloud temperature and water vapor using a hyperspectral infrared sounder

Abstract

Abstract. Measuring atmospheric conditions above convective storms using spaceborne instruments is challenging. The operational retrieval framework of current hyperspectral infrared sounders adopts a cloud-clearing scheme that is unreliable in overcast conditions. To overcome this issue, previous studies have developed an optimal estimation method that retrieves the temperature and humidity above high thick clouds by assuming a slab of cloud. In this study, we find that variations in the effective radius and density of cloud ice near the tops of convective clouds lead to non-negligible spectral uncertainties in simulated infrared radiance spectra. These uncertainties cannot be fully eliminated by the slab-cloud assumption. To address this problem, a synergistic retrieval method is developed here. This method retrieves temperature, water vapor, and cloud properties simultaneously by incorporating observations from active sensors in synergy with infrared radiance spectra. A simulation experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of different retrieval strategies using synthetic radiance data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and cloud data from CloudSat/CALIPSO. In this experiment, we simulate infrared radiance spectra from convective storms through a combination of a numerical weather prediction model and a radiative transfer model. The simulation experiment shows that the synergistic method is advantageous, as it shows high retrieval sensitivity to the temperature and ice water content near the cloud top. The synergistic method more than halves the root-mean-square errors in temperature and column integrated water vapor compared to prior knowledge based on the climatology. It can also improve the quantification of the ice water content and effective radius compared to prior knowledge based on retrievals from active sensors. Our results suggest that existing infrared hyperspectral sounders can detect the spatial distributions of temperature and humidity anomalies above convective storms.