Statistical harmonization and uncertainty assessment in the comparison of satellite and radiosonde climate variables

TL;DR

This study develops a likelihood-based method to compare satellite and radiosonde climate variables, quantifying uncertainties due to measurement and resolution differences to improve climate data validation.

Contribution

It introduces a functional data approach for harmonizing satellite and radiosonde measurements, explicitly quantifying vertical smoothing and sparseness uncertainties.

Findings

Vertical smoothing mismatch uncertainty: 0.50 K for temperature, 0.16 g/kg for humidity.

RAOB sparseness uncertainty: 0.29 K for temperature, 0.13 g/kg for humidity.

Method effectively quantifies measurement uncertainties in climate variable comparisons.

Abstract

Satellite product validation is key to ensure the delivery of quality products for climate and weather applications. To do this, a fundamental step is the comparison with other instruments, such us radiosonde. This is specially true for Essential Climate Variables such as temperature and humidity. Thanks to a functional data representation, this paper uses a likelihood based approach which exploits the measurement uncertainties in a natural way. In particular the comparison of temperature and humdity radiosonde measurements collected within RAOB network and the corresponding atmospheric profiles derived from IASI interferometers aboard of Metop-A and Metop-B satellites is developed with the aim of understanding the vertical smoothing mismatch uncertainty. Moreover, conventional RAOB functional data representation is assessed by means of a comparison with radiosonde reference measurements given by GRUAN network, which provides high resolution fully traceable radiosouding profiles. In this way the uncertainty related to coarse vertical resolution, or sparseness, of conventional RAOB is assessed. It has been found that the uncertainty of vertical smoothing mismatch averaged along the profile is 0.50 K for temperature and 0.16 g/kg for water vapour mixing ratio. Moreover the uncertainty related to RAOB sparseness, averaged along the profile is 0.29 K for temperature and 0.13 g/kg for water vapour mixing ratio.