Combined Surface- and Satellite-Based Microwave Temperature Profile Retrieval

Remote sensing of vertical temperature profiles by combined satellite- and surface-based microwave radiometers is evaluated. For both clear and cloudy conditions, realistic simulations of retrieval accuracy for three climatologies with highly variable temperature structure suggest that rms retrieval accuracies from 1.0 to 2.0 K can be obtained from the surface to 300 mb using the combined passive measurements. When the height of the tropopause, as measured by ground-based radars, is used in a retrieval algorithm, simulations show that retrievals are improved over a broad altitude range, and that retrieval accuracies better than ∼2 K rms from the surface to 100 mb can be achieved.