Validation of the AMSU-B Bias Corrections Based on Satellite Measurements from SSM/T-2

The NOAA-15 Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B) was designed in the same spirit as the Special Sensor Microwave Water Vapor Profiler (SSM/T-2) on board the DMSP F11-14 satellites, to perform remote sensing of spatial and temporal variations in mid and upper troposphere humidity. While the SSM/T-2 instruments have a 48 km spatial resolution at nadir and 28 beam positions per scan, AMSU-B provides an improvement with a 16 km spatial resolution at nadir and 90 beam positions per scan. The AMSU-B instrument, though, has been experiencing radio frequency interference (RFI) contamination from the NOAA-15 transmitters whose effect is dependent upon channel, geographic location, and current spacecraft antenna configuration. This has lead to large cross-track biases reaching as high as 100 Kelvin for channel 17 (150 GHz) and 50 Kelvin for channel 19 (183 +/-3 GHz). NOAA-NESDIS has recently provided a series of bias corrections for AMSU-B data starting from March, 1999. These corrections are available for each of the five channels, for every third field of view, and for three cycles within an eight second period. There is also a quality indicator in each data record to indicate whether or not the bias corrections should be applied. As a precursor to performing retrievals of mid and upper troposphere humidity, a validation study is performed by statistically analyzing the differences between the F14 SSM/T-2 and the bias corrected AMSU-B brightness temperatures for three months in the spring of 1999.