This proposal is submitted to Section A15 of ROSES-2006 and is a combination of proposal types 3.1 and 3.2 for membership on the AMSR-E Team. The primary objective of this investigation is to produce a set of climate quality geophysical retrievals from AMSR-E, and then integrate these retrievals into the existing satellite climate record. The geophysical retrievals to be produced are sea-surface temperature (SST), near-surface wind speed, vertically integrated water vapor, vertically integrated cloud water, and surface rain rate. These retrievals are done only over the ocean hence are called the ocean products. The multisensor/multiplatform set of ocean products coming from this investigation is called an Ocean Climate Data Record (OCDR). At the end of this proposed investigation, the OCDR will span 24 years (1987-2010), except for the microwave SST record that starts in 1997.
To achieve this objective, we will first re-evaluate the AMSR-E ocean retrievals from the perspective of high-precision climate requirements and make necessary adjustments and improvements that will upgrade the AMSR-E retrievals to CDR status. Then the AMSR-E ocean products will be merged into the existing satellite climate record to obtain decadal-length timeseries suitable for studying climate variability.
The work plan is to first implement improvements to the ocean retrieval algorithm and complete the calibration of the AMSR-E TA over land. The long-term stability of the AMSR-E hot load correction will then be verified. Once the algorithms and calibration methods have been finalized, the AMSR-E ocean products will be reprocessed, and their long-term stability will be verified. To accomplish this, we will develop and test new methods for doing validation on decadal timescales. We will also examine the effect that diurnal variability has on merging data for satellites having different equator crossing times. The final step will be the integration of the AMSR-E ocean products into the existing satellite climate record, thereby producing an OCDR spanning 24 years.
We expect the OCDR will be a significant and essential Earth System Data Record (ESDR) for studying the Earth climate system. In particular, all five ocean parameters are key variables in the global energy and water cycle. Wind speed is the major driver of evaporation; the motion of columnar water vapor and cloud water gives horizontal advection; and precipitation completes the balance. The through-cloud SST retrievals provide an uninterrupted view of the ocean, free of cloud and water vapor contamination, and have become a mainstay for oceanographic research. The microwave SST also has great potential for increasing our understanding of how upper ocean heat content can affect hurricane intensity as well as how mixing and upwelling cools the SST after storm passage. With respect to climate prediction models, accurate multi-decadal observational datasets are essential for their training and validating.
