Stability of the vicarious cold calibration statistic for the GPM constellation

The vicarious cold calibration statistic has been analyzed to determine its stability. Modeled top of atmosphere brightness temperatures representing microwave radiometer observations are computed for the month of July 2005 using a radiative transfer model. The vicarious cold calibration algorithm is applied to the population of brightness temperatures along with two other statistics for comparison. The stability is assessed by perturbing the sea surface temperatures and atmospheric water vapor in the model to simulate a global warming event. The results show that the vicarious cold calibration statistic is the most stable since it has the least variation for the simulated warming event.