An Evaluation of Satellite Remote Sensing Data Products for Land Surface Hydrology: Atmospheric Infrared Sounder*

Abstract The skill of instantaneous Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) retrieved near-surface meteorology, including surface skin temperature (Ts), air temperature (Ta), specific humidity (q), and relative humidity (RH), as well as model-derived surface pressure (Psurf) and 10-m wind speed (w), is evaluated using collocated National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in situ observations, offline data from the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS), and geostationary remote sensing (RS) data from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI). Such data are needed for RS-based water cycle monitoring in areas without readily available in situ data. The study is conducted over the continental United States and Africa for a period of more than 6 years (2002–08). For both regions, it provides for the first time the geographic distribution of AIRS retrieval performance. Through conditional sampling, attribution of retrieval errors to scene atmospheric and surface conditions is performed. Th...

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