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Evaluation of a Microwave Emissivity Module for Snow Covered Area with CMEM in the ECMWF Integrated Forecasting System.
- Source :
- Remote Sensing; Sep2020, Vol. 12 Issue 18, p2946, 1p
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- The Community Microwave Emission Modelling platform (CMEM) has been developed by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) as the forward operator radiative transfer model for low frequency passive microwave brightness temperatures (TB). It is used at ECMWF for L-band TB monitoring over snow free areas. In this paper, upgrades to CMEM are presented in order to explore forward modelling in snow-covered areas for coupled land-atmosphere numerical weather prediction systems. The upgrades enable to use CMEM on an extended range of frequencies and the Helsinki University of Technology multi-layer snow emission model is implemented. Offline CMEM experiments are evaluated against AMSR2 (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2) observations showing that simulated TB is improved when using a multi-layer snow scheme, compared to a single-layer scheme. The improvements mainly result from a better representation of snow characteristics in the multi-layer snowpack model. CMEM is also evaluated in the Integrated Forecasting System and coupled to RTTOV (Radiative Transfer for TOVS). The numerical results show improved simulated TB at low frequency V polarization over snow-covered area compared to a configuration using emissivity atlas. Degradations at frequencies higher than 20 GHz indicate that further improvements are required in the emissivity and snowpack properties modelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20724292
- Volume :
- 12
- Issue :
- 18
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Remote Sensing
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 146537690
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12182946