Preliminary Development and Testing of an EPS-SG Microwave Sounder Proxy Data Generator Using the NOAA Microwave Integrated Retrieval System

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites currently plans to launch Meteorological Operational Satellite Second Generation A1 (Metop-SG A1) with the microwave Sounder (MWS) instrument in 2023. MWS is a cross-track scanning passive microwave radiometer measuring in the range from 23.8 to 229 GHz, which is similar to the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) on board the satellites in the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) program. To confirm the capability of operational retrieval systems with MWS before its operational deployment, the prerequisites are to have the MWS simulated brightness temperatures and to apply them to a proper testbed. In this study, a preliminary version of MWS proxy data generator has been developed to provide the MWS simulated brightness temperature datasets and the Microwave Integrated Retrieval System (MiRS) is used as a testbed for an operational retrieval system. ATMS simulated brightness temperature datasets are also generated in the same way in which the MWS simulated brightness temperature datasets are generated in order to have a consistent comparison between MWS and ATMS results. MiRS was run with the MWS simulated inputs and the results are comparable to those of the MiRS ATMS experiments. MiRS MWS total precipitable water accuracy and precision are within most JPSS requirements. The change in channel characteristics from ATMS to MWS including the addition of temperature sounding channels at 53.2 and 53.9 GHz and the polarization change in channels 1 and 2 appear to slightly improve performance of MWS over land temperature and water vapor retrievals,respectively.