Microwave Integrated Retrieval System (MIRS) - Radiometric Peformance

Data Quality Monitoring

This is the Data Quality Monitoring (DQM) online section of the Microwave Integrated Retrieval System (MIRS). The Microwave Integrated Retrieval System (MIRS) runs routinely at NOAA/NESDIS/STAR for a number of sensors (currently NOAA-18 and METOP-A and soon for DMSP-F16 SSMIS). To assess the products quality, we routinely monitor both the geophysical and radiometric performances, in addition to monitoring the products themselves. This is done by using the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) Analyses outputs. These gridded fields are first interpolated to the exact location of the satellite measurements before a point-to-point comparison is undertaken. The geophysical performance is the comparison of the MIRS products with the GDAS products while the radiometric performances consist of the comparison between the measurements and the simulated radiances using the Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM) and the GDAS fields as inputs. It is important to note that at any given day at around 1AM, MIRS kicks off the processing of the previous day's data.

Scientific Monitoring

It is also important to keep in mind that MIRS uses five (5) analyzes (00, 06, 12, 18, 24) to perform the time-interpolation of GDAS fields to avoid doing any extrapolation or using the 18h00 analysis for all data between 18h00 and 24h00. This requires that the geophysical performance at any given day is processed only two days after that particular day. Besides the products monitoring, the geophysical and radiometric performances monitoring, we also perform the daily computation of noise values (NeDT) as they are used as inputs to the 1DVAR system, and monitor their time variation. The purpose being to detect any glitches, noise increases or any other type of trends. The same is done for the brightness temperatures calibration biases, slopes and intercepts. This section of the web site is linked to the Microwave Surface and Precipitation Products System (MSPPS) official products. Switching between the MIRS outputs (1DVAR) and the MSPPS products (Heritage) is possible.

Seasonal/Climate Time series

For seasonal and climate applications, the time series of the products are also available in this section, allowing an animation of the fields of the products with different steps and increments to allow the user to detect any change in features with time.

Descriptions of the Options

This section of the web site allows the user to :

1. Monitor the products derived from the Microwave Integrated Retrieval System (MIRS).
2. Have access to the daily scientific validation monitoring, which is based on a point-by-point comparison to the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) outputs.
3. Animate a time series of several products.
4. Have access to the daily radiometric performances monitoring.
5. View the NeDT time series to monitor any trend.
6. View the biases, slopes, intercepts of the bias correction as a function of time to detect any time drifts, for all scan positions.

Applications

For all options above, the user can select which sensor to view, which product to display, which channel to analyze, and when selecting an atmospheric profile (be it temperature, moisture, etc), which layer to visualize. When selecting emissivity, one can also select which particular channel to focus on. This flexible setting can allow the user to perform:

1. Inter-sensor comparison (same product, different sensor)
2. Cross-talk assessment (same sensor, different products)
3. Time series (same sensor, same product, different dates)
4. Diurnal variation assessment (same product, same sensor, but ascending versus descending)
5. Cross-algorithm comparison (same sensor, same date, same product, different algorithms) etc...

Please click on one of the options on the left panel to start the DQM process.