Validation of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder Water Vapor Retrievals Using Global Positioning System: Case Study in South Korea
- Resource Type
- article
- Authors
- Jihye Won; Kwan-Dong Park; Dusik Kim; Jihyun Ha
- Source
- Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences, Vol 28, Iss 4, Pp 291-298 (2011)
- Subject
- total precipitable water
global positioning system
atmospheric infrared sounder level 2 products
Astronomy
QB1-991
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 2093-5587
2093-1409
The atmospheric infrared sounder (AIRS) sensor loaded on the Aqua satellite observes the global vertical structure of atmosphere and enables verification of the water vapor distribution over the entire area of South Korea. In this study, we performed a comparative analysis of the accuracy of the total precipitable water (TPW) provided as the AIRS level 2 standard retrieval product by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) over the South Korean area using the global positioning system (GPS) TPW data. The analysis TPW for the period of one year in 2008 showed that the accuracy of the data produced by the combination of the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit sensor with the AIRS sensor to correct the effect of clouds (AIRS-X) was higher than that of the AIRS IR-only data (AIRS-I). The annual means of the root mean square error with reference to the GPS data were 5.2 kg/m2 and 4.3 kg/m2 for AIRS-I and AIRS-X, respectively. The accuracy of AIRS-X was higher in summer than in winter while measurement values of AIRS-I and AIRS-X were lower than those of GPS TPW to some extent.