2012 STAR Seminars

The University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH), Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Satellite Applications and Research (NOAA STAR) have constructed long term temperature records for deep atmospheric layers using satellite microwave sounding unit (MSU) and advanced microwave sounding unit (AMSU) observations. However, these groups disagree on the magnitude of global temperature trends since 1979, including the trend for the mid-tropospheric layer (TMT). This study evaluates the selection of the MSU TMT warm target factor for the NOAA-9 satellite using five homogenized radiosonde products as references. The analysis reveals that the UAH TMT product has a positive bias of 0.051 ± 0.031 in the warm target factor that artificially reduces the global TMT trend by an estimated 0.04 K per decade for 1979 - 2009. Accounting for this bias, we estimate that the global UAH TMT trend should increase from 0.038 K per decade to 0.080 K per decade, effectively eliminating the trend difference between UAH and RSS and decreasing the trend difference between UAH and NOAA by 47%. This warm target factor bias directly affects the UAH lower tropospheric (TLT) product and tropospheric temperature trends derived from a combination of TMT and lower stratospheric (TLS) channels.

Stephen Po-Chedley is a PhD student at the University of Washington Department of Atmospheric Sciences. He is interested in structural changes in the atmosphere under anthropogenic global warming, remote sensing, and the impacts of climate change on food security.

Dr. Keith D. Hutchison has authored many publications and reports that cite his use of manually-generated clouds masks to quantify the performance of automated cloud analysis and forecast systems. In his seminar, Dr. Hutchison will discuss the process he has used to create these manually-generated cloud analyses and show examples with VIIRS imagery. The seminar will focus on the use of these manual cloud analyses from the initial evaluation of the VIIRS cloud mask algorithm, in 2003, through the final pre-launch tuning of the remediated VCM algorithm in 2011. He will discuss, in detail, the results using a unique pre-launch tuning process, which was recently published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing, developed to tune the VCM algorithm for the NPP program. Dr. Hutchison will also overview new applications for these analyses to a variety of scientific investigations, including his plans to quantify the performance of cloud forecasts generated by the WRF model and regional climate models, in conjunction with researchers associated with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) at the University of Washington in Seattle.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been flying microwave sounders since 1975 on Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellites (POES). Microwave observations have made significant contributions to the understanding of the atmosphere and Earth surface, helping to improve weather forecasts. However, NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) have requirements for all-weather observations that cannot be met due to the unavailability of proven technologies.

Since 2002, OSD has been working with NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), who is developing a geostationary microwave sounder called the Geostationary Thinned Aperture Radiometer (GeoSTAR), with a sparse aperture array. Geo-STAR is the sensor recommended to be flown on a geostationary research satellite mission called the Precipitation and All-weather Temperature and Humidity sounder Mission (PATH). PATH is one of the 15 NASA satellite missions recommended by the National Research Council in its 2007 Earth Science Decadal Survey. Progress and status of the development of GeoSTAR will be presented. The presentation will be followed by an open discussion of how NOAA may partner in a possible satellite demonstration of GeoSTAR in the near future.