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A comparative assessment of Kalpana-1 and MISR cloud tracked winds over the Indian Ocean region

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Abstract

In this study, an attempt has been made to advance the error characteristic of atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) derived from the infrared and water vapour channels of Kalpana-1 very high resolution radiometer by comparing against stereo motion vectors (SMVs) retrieved by tracking clouds from the multi-angle imaging spectro-radiometer (MISR) for a period of 9 months. Two different versions of the MISR SMVs with horizontal resolutions 70.4 and 17.6 km, respectively, are used for the inter-comparison. It is found that the Kalpana-1 AMV has stronger westerlies and southerlies than the MISR SMV at all latitudes and levels in majority of times. The performances of Kalpana-1 AMVs against MISR SMVs are assessed by doing a similar analysis where Meteosat-7 AMVs (infrared and water vapour AMVs) are also evaluated against the MISR SMVs for the same region. It is found that results of both AMVs (Kalpana-1 and Meteosat-7) with both sets of MISR SMVs are comparable with few exceptions. The zonal wind components of the MISR SMVs showed smaller mean wind difference and root mean square difference (RMSD) compared to the meridional wind components. The SMVs are typically assigned to higher altitudes than AMVs. Analysis related to the height discrepancies between MISR SMVs and AMVs shows that in the multi-layer cloud AMVs are tracked in upper level cloud targets, while SMVs are skewed more towards lower level. The accuracy is better for the low level where collocations are highly dense and gradually decreases towards the higher levels. Because of improvement in the MISR SMV retrieval algorithm, the errors in the meridional component of SMVs have improved in the recently released version with horizontal resolution of 17.6 km.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the anonymous reviewers for the critical and insightful comments and suggestions which have significantly improved the quality and presentation of the current version of the manuscript. The MOSDAC portal (www.mosdac.gov.in) of Space Applications Centre (SAC), ISRO, Ahmedabad is acknowledged for making Kalpana-1 data available on operational basis. The Director SAC and the Deputy Director, EPSA SAC, ISRO Ahmedabad are acknowledged for their encouragement and help during the course of this study. The authors are also thankful to Kevin Mueller of JPL NASA for providing MISR SMVs data through International Winds Working Group (IWWG) for making this study possible. The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is acknowledged for providing Meteosat-7 AMV data through the EUMETSAT website.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Group, Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organization, Ahmedabad, 380015, India

    S. K. Deb, Inderpreet Kaur, C. M. Kishtawal & P. K. Pal

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  1. S. K. Deb
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  2. Inderpreet Kaur
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  3. C. M. Kishtawal
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  4. P. K. Pal
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Correspondence to S. K. Deb.

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Deb, S.K., Kaur, I., Kishtawal, C.M. et al. A comparative assessment of Kalpana-1 and MISR cloud tracked winds over the Indian Ocean region. Theor Appl Climatol 121, 425–443 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1246-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-014-1246-4

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