Quantitative Characteristics Analysis of FY4A Satellite Products during a Thunderstorm Weather Process

Based on the lightning monitoring and FY4A satellite data in 12 periods during a thunderstorm,the relationship between lightning activity and four satellite digital products:blackbody radiation brightness temperature(TBB),cloud top temperature(CTT),cloud top height(CTH)and cloud top pressure(CTP)was quantitatively analyzed.The following conclusions were obtained:(1)at lightning location,90.5%of TBB values were less than 214.1 K;88.5%of CTT values were less than 207.7 K;88.5%of CTP values were less than 137.7 hPa,and 88.5%of CTH values were greater than 14872 m.At location without lightning,92.5%of TBB values were greater than 214.1 K;90.4%of CTT values were greater than 207.7 K;89%of CTP values were greater than 137.7 hPa,and 92%of CTH values were less than 14872 m.(2)Lightning activity was concentrated in the cloud area with TBB between 190-210 K,CTT between 185-210 K,CTP between 50-150 hPa and CTH between 12-18 km.Lightning intensity was roughly positively correlated with TBB,CTT and CTP,and negatively correlated with CTH.With the increase of CTH,lightning intensity decreased.(3)TBB,CTT,CTP and CTH can well indicate the location and activity frequency of lightning in thunderstorm weather.

The Performance of Downward Shortwave Radiation Products from Satellite and Reanalysis over the Transect of Zhongshan Station to Dome A, East Antarctica

The downward shortwave radiation(DSR) is an important part of the Earth's energy balance, driving Earth's system's energy, water, and carbon cycles. Due to the harsh Antarctic environment, the accuracy of DSR derived from satellite and reanalysis has not been systematically evaluated over the transect of Zhongshan station to Dome A, East Antarctica.Therefore, this study aims to evaluate DSR reanalysis products(ERA5-Land, ERA5, MERRA-2) and satellite products(CERES and ICDR) in this area. The results indicate that DSR exhibits obvious monthly and seasonal variations, with higher values in summer than in winter. The ERA5-Land(ICDR) DSR product demonstrated the highest(lowest) accuracy,as evidenced by a correlation coefficient of 0.988(0.918), a root-mean-square error of 23.919(69.383) W m^(–2), a mean bias of –1.667(–28.223) W m^(–2) and a mean absolute error of 13.37(58.99) W m^(–2). The RMSE values for the ERA5-Land reanalysis product at seven stations, namely Zhongshan, Panda 100, Panda 300, Panda 400, Taishan, Panda 1100, and Kunlun, were 30.938, 29.447, 34.507, 29.110, 20.339, 17.267, and 14.700 W m^(-2), respectively;with corresponding bias values of 9.887, –12.159, –19.181, –15.519, –8.118, 6.297, and 3.482 W m^(–2). Regarding seasonality, ERA5-Land, ERA5,and MERRA-2 reanalysis products demonstrate higher accuracies during spring and summer, while ICDR products are least accurate in autumn. Cloud cover, water vapor, total ozone, and severe weather are the main factors affecting DSR. The error of DSR products is greatest in coastal areas(particularly at the Zhongshan station) and decreases towards the inland areas of Antarctica.

Comparison of variability and change rate in tropospheric NO_(2) column obtained from satellite products across China during 1997–2015

Tropospheric NO_(2) column(TNC)products retrieved from five satellites including GOME/ERS-2(H,1997–2002),SCIAMACHY(S,2003–2011),OMI(O,2005–2015),GOME-2/METOP_A(A,2007–2013)and GOME-2/METOP_B(B,2013–2015)were compared in terms of their spatiotemporal variability and changes over China.The temporal series of H suggested an increasing trend of TNC from 1997 to 2002,those of S,O and A revealed further increasing trends until the highest level of TNC was reached in 2011,but decreasing trends were detected by those of O and B from 2011 to 2015.Seasonally,TNC was the highest in winter and the lowest in summer.Variability and changes from satellite TNC products are also analyzed in different regions of China.Spatially,it was the highest in North China and the lowest in Tibetan Plateau based on five datasets.Overall,TNCs from A,B and S were higher than that from O;and TNC from S was larger than that from A at the country level.The higher TNC the region has,the larger difference satellite products would show.However,different datasets reached a good agreement in the spatial pattern of trends in TNC with highly significant increasing trends detected in North China.

Evaluation of high-resolution satellite precipitation products with surface rain gauge observations from Laohahe Basin in northern China

Three high-resolution satellite precipitation products, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission （TRMM） standard precipitation products 3B42V6 and 3B42RT and the Climate Precipitation Center＇s （CPC） morphing technique precipitation product （CMORPH）, were evaluated against surface rain gauge observations from the Laohahe Basin in northern China. Widely used statistical validation indices and categorical statistics were adopted. The evaluations were performed at multiple time scales, ranging from daily to yearly, for the years from 2003 to 2008. The results show that all three satellite precipitation products perform very well in detecting the occurrence of precipitation events, but there are some different biases in the amount of precipitation. 3B42V6, which has a bias of 21%, fits best with the surface rain gauge observations at both daily and monthly scales, while the biases of 3B42RT and CMORPH, with values of 81% and 67%, respectively, are much higher than a normal receivable threshold. The quality of the satellite precipitation products also shows monthly and yearly variation： 3B42RT has a large positive bias in the cold season from September to April, while CMORPH has a large positive bias in the warm season from May to August, and they all attained their best values in 2006 （with 10%, 50%, and -5% biases for 3B42V6, 3B42RT, and CMORPH, respectively）. Our evaluation shows that, for the Laohahe Basin, 3B42V6 has the best correspondence with the surface observations, and CMORPH performs much better than 3B42RT. The large errors of 3B42RT and CMORPH remind us of the need for new improvements to satellite precipitation retrieval algorithms or feasible bias adjusting methods.

Validation of Three Satellite Precipitation Products in Two South-Western African Watersheds: Bandama (Ivory Coast) and Mono (Togo)

Satellite precipitation products are widely used in different domain, in area where there is a lack in observation. These have different spatio-temporal resolutions consequently resulting in different precipitation amounts depending on the product. The present study validates three satellite products, namely the Climate Hazard group Infrared Precipitation with Stations (CHIRPS), the Climate Research Unit (CRU) and the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) over Bandama and Mono river basins for 1981-2005 and 1981-2016 respectively by comparing them to the observation precipitation of the basin. The available studies are focused on the regional scale but not on a watershed scale for hydrological studies. The analysis reveals that all the products are strongly correlated to each other as well as to the observed data at basin level. The Lamb coefficient test shows that most all the chosen basin namely Bandama and Mono presents the same climatic indices. All the products present the same variability and trend as the observation at basins scale. By comparing those products to observation, CHIRPS product following by GPCP give the lowest mean absolute error (MAE) at annual and seasonal time scales while CHIRPS is followed by CRU at monthly scale. Overall, all products overestimate the precipitation at Bandama basin while they underestimate it over Mono river basin. The comparison over 1981-2017 period of the total annual precipitation increasing southern ward (from Sahel to the coastal zone) for all the three studied products which varies from 300 mm to 2400 mm/year. All the three products are not significantly different from one another and they all highlight the same areas of hotspot rainfall in the region. The same conclusion is made at monthly and seasonal scales. Therefore, any of these products especially CHIRPS can be used for study in this region due to its lowest bias and MAE.

Some Features of Black Carbon Aerosols Connected with Regional Climate Over Pristine Environment

The authors report the results of aethalometer black carbon(BC)aerosol measurements carried out over a rural(pristine)site,Panchgaon,Haryana State,India during the winter months of 2021-2022 and 2022-2023.They are compared with collocated and concurrent observations from the Air Quality Monitoring Station(AQMS),which provides synchronous air pollution and surface meteorological parameters.Secular variations in BC mass concentration are studied and explained with variations in local meteorological parameters.The biomass burning fire count retrievals from NASA-NOAA VIIRS satellite,and backward airmass trajectories from NOAA-ERL HYSPLIT Model analysis have also been utilized to explain the findings.They reveal that the north-west Indian region contributes maximum to the BC mass concentration over the study site during the study period.Moreover,the observed BC mass concentrations corroborate the synchronous fire count,primary and secondary pollutant concentrations.The results were found to aid the development of mitigation methods to achieve a sustainable climate system.

Satellite Monitoring of the Surface Water and Energy Budget in the Central Tibetan Plateau

The water and energy cycle in the Tibetan Plateau is an important component of Monsoon Asia and the global energy and water cycle. Using data at a CEOP （Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period）-Tibet site, this study presents a first-order evaluation on the skill of weather forecasting from GCMs and satellites in producing precipitation and radiation estimates. The satellite data, together with the satellite leaf area index, are then integrated into a land data assimilation system （LDAS-UT） to estimate the soil moisture and surface energy budget on the Plateau. The system directly assimilates the satellite microwave brightness temperature, which is strongly affected by soil moisture but not by cloud layers, into a simple biosphere model. A major feature of this system is a dual-pass assimilation technique, which can auto-calibrate model parameters in one pass and estimate the soil moisture and energy budget in the other pass. The system outputs, including soil moisture, surface temperature, surface energy partition, and the Bowen ratio, are compared with observations, land surface models, the Global Land Data Assimilation System, and four general circulation models. The results show that this satellite data-based system has a high potential for a reliable estimation of the regional surface energy budget on the Plateau.

Evaluation of satellite land surface albedo products over China using ground-measurements

Land surface albedo(LSA)is an important parameter in surface energy balance and global climate change.It has been used in the fields of energy budgets,climate dynamics,and land surface processes.To apply satellite LSA products more widely,the product accuracy needs to be evaluated at different scales and under atmospheric and surface conditions.This study validates and analyzes the errors of the LSA datasets from the Global LAnd Surface Satellites(GLASS)product,the European Space Agency’s Earth Observation Envelope Programme(GlobAlbedo),the Quality Assurance for Essential Climate Variables(QA4ECV)project,the Gap-filled Snow-free Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function(BRDF)parameters product(MCD43GF),and the Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring(CM SAF)Albedo dataset from the AVHRR data(CLARA-SAL)against the Chinese Ecosystem Research Network(CERN)measurements at different spatiotemporal scales over China from 2005 to 2015.The results show that LSA estimated by GLASS agrees well with the CERN measurements on a continental scale.The GLASS product is characterized by a correlation coefficient of 0.80,a root-mean-square error of 0.09,and a mean absolute error of 0.06.The consistency between GLASS,GlobAlbedo,and CLARA-SAL is slightly lower over the regions with high aerosol optical depth(AOD)(e.g.Sichuan Basin,northern China)and high cloud cover compared with that in regions with lower AOD and low cloud cover.The estimation errors are related to varying atmospheric and surface conditions and increase with increasing AOD and cloud cover and decreasing enhanced vegetation index.Therefore,algorithms under complex atmospheric and surface conditions(e.g.high AOD,sparse vegetation)should be optimized to improve the accuracy of LSA products.

Hydrological assessment of TRMM rainfall data over Yangtze River Basin

High-quality rainfall information is critical for accurate simulation of runoff and water cycle processes on the land surface. In situ monitoring of rainfall has a very limited utility at the regional and global scale because of the high temporal and spatial variability of rainfall. As a step toward overcoming this problem, microwave remote sensing observations can be used to retrieve the temporal and spatial rainfall coverage because of their global availability and frequency of measurement. This paper addresses the question of whether remote sensing rainfall estimates over a catchment can be used for water balance computations in the distributed hydrological model. The TRMM 3B42V6 rainfall product was introduced into the hydrological cycle simulation of the Yangtze River Basin in South China. A tool was developed to interpolate the rain gauge observations at the same temporal and spatial resolution as the TRMM data and then evaluate the precision of TRMM 3B42V6 data from 1998 to 2006. It shows that the TRMM 3B42V6 rainfall product was reliable and had good precision in application to the Yangtze River Basin. The TRMM 3B42V6 data slightly overestimated rainfall during the wet season and underestimated rainfall during the dry season in the Yangtze River Basin. Results suggest that the TRMM 3B42V6 rainfall product can be used as an alternative data source for large-scale distributed hydrological models.

Satellite precipitation product:Applicability and accuracy evaluation in diverse region

Satellite precipitation products,e.g.,Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission version-07(hereafter TRMM)and its successor Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement(hereafter IMERG)are being used at a global scale for rainfall estimation.Recently,SM2RAIN-ASCAT(hereafter SM2RAIN)is a novel addition to satellite-based precipitation products which gives the rainfall estimates from the knowledge of soil moisture state and is based on‘bottom to top’approach.A comparative assessment of any newly developed product or a new version of the product is quite vital for algorithm developers and users.Hence,this research work was carried out to evaluate the accuracy and applicability of SM2RAIN,in comparison to in-situ data,TRMM,and IMERG in diverse regions of Pakistan.The comparative analysis was performed on a temporal scale(daily and monthly)and seasonal scale(spring,autumn,summer,and winter)using five performance metrics namely,root mean square error(RMSE),correlation coefficient(CC),false alarm ratio(FAR),the probability of detection(POD),and critical success index(CSI).The results showed that:(1)SM2RAIN is a better rainfall estimation product in the dry region(having avg.CC>0.35),however,less effective in hilly and mountainous terrain having high rainfall intensity;(2)SM2RAIN provides more satisfactory estimates in winter and autumn seasons,while relative poor in the summer season;(3)SM2RAIN performs better in terms of rainfall detection with an average POD of 0.61;(4)the overall performance of SM2RAIN is very convincing and it was concluded that SM2RAIN can be a feasible satellite product for most of the areas of Pakistan.It is noteworthy here to mention that this could be the preliminary assessment of SM2RAIN in diverse climatic zones of Pakistan.

Satellite detection of increases in global land surface evapotranspiration during 1984-2007

As a key component of digital earth,remotely sensed data provides the compelling evidence that the amount of water vapour transferred from the entire global surface to the atmosphere increased from 1984 to 2007.The validation results from the earlier evapotranspiration(ET)estimation algorithm based on net radiation(Rn),Normalised Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI),air temperature and diurnal air temperature range(DTaR)showed good agreement between estimated monthly ET and ground-measured ET from 20 flux towers.Our analysis indicates that the estimated actual ET has increased on average over the entire global land surface except for Antarctica during 1984
2007.However,this increasing trend disappears after 2000 and the reason may be that the decline in net radiation and NDVI during this period depleted surface soil moisture.Moreover,the good correspondence between the precipitation trend and the change in ET in arid and semi-arid regions indicated that surface moisture linked to precipitation affects ET.The input parameters Rn,Tair,NDVI and DTaR show substantial spatio-temporal variability that is almost consistent with that of actual ET from 1984 to 2007 and contribute most significantly to the variation in actual ET.

Quality monitoring of real-time GNSS precise positioning service system

The Real-Time Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)Precise Positioning Service(RTPPS)is recognized as the most promising system by providing precise satellite orbit and clock correc-tions for users to achieve centimeter-level positioning with a stand-alone receiver in real-time.Although the products are available with high accuracy almost all the time,they may occasionally suffer from unexpected significant biases,which consequently degrades the positioning perfor-mance.Therefore,quality monitoring at the system-level has become more and more crucial for providing a reliable GNSS service.In this paper,we propose a method for the monitoring of realtime satellite orbit and clock products using a monitoring station network based on the Quality Control(QC)theory.The satellites with possible biases are first detected based on the outliers identified by Precise Point Positioning(PPP)in the monitoring station network.Then,the corresponding orbit and clock parameters with temporal constraints are introduced and esti-mated through the sequential Least Square(LS)estimator and the corresponding Instantaneous User Range Errors(IUREs)can be determined.A quality indicator is calculated based on the IUREs in the monitoring network and compared with a pre-defined threshold.The quality monitoring method is experimentally evaluated by monitoring the real-time orbit and clock products generated by GeoForschungsZentrum(GFZ),Potsdam.The results confirm that the problematic satellites can be detected accurately and effectively with missed detection rate 4×10^(-6) and false alarm rate 1:2×10^(-5).Considering the quality alarms,the PPP results in terms of RMS of positioning differences with respect to the International GNSS Service(IGS)weekly solution in the north,east and up directions can be improved by 12%,10%and 27%,respectively.

Estimation of the Aerosol Radiative Effect over the Tibetan Plateau Based on the Latest CALIPSO Product

Based on the CALIPSO （Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation） Version 4.10 products released on 8 November 2016, the Level 2 （L2） aerosol product over the Tibetan Plateau （TP） is evaluated and the aerosol radiative effect is also estimated in this study. As there are still some missing aerosol data points in the day-time CALIPSO Version 4.10 L2 product, this study re-calculated the aerosol extinction coefficient to explore the aer-osol radiative effect over the TP based on the CALIPSO Level 1 （L1） and CloudSat 2B-CLDCLASS-LIDAR products. The energy budget estimation obtained by using the AODs （aerosol optical depths） from calculated aerosol extinction coefficient as an input to a radiative transfer model shows better agreement with the Earth＇s Radiant En- ergy System （CERES） and CloudSat 2B-FLXHR-LIDAR observations than that with the input of AODs from aero- sol extinction coefficient from CALIPSO Version 4.10 L2 product. The radiative effect and heating rate of aerosols over the TP are further simulated by using the calculated aerosol extinction coefficient. The dust aerosols may heat the atmosphere by retaining the energy in the layer. The instantaneous heating rate can be as high as 5.5 K day^-1 de-pending on the density of the dust layers. Overall, the dust aerosols significantly affect the radiative energy budget and thermodynamic structure of the air over the TP, mainly by altering the shortwave radiation budget. The signific-ant influence of dust aerosols over the TP on the radiation budget may have important implications for investigating the atmospheric circulation and future regional and global climate.

Estimation of fractional cycle bias for GPS/BDS-2/Galileo based on international GNSS monitoring and assessment system observations using the uncombined PPP model

The Fractional Cycle Bias(FCB)product is crucial for the Ambiguity Resolution(AR)in Precise Point Positioning(PPP).Different from the traditional method using the ionospheric-free ambiguity which is formed by the Wide Lane(WL)and Narrow Lane(NL)combinations,the uncombined PPP model is flexible and effective to generate the FCB prod-ucts.This study presents the FCB estimation method based on the multi-Global Navigation Satellite System(GNSS)precise satellite orbit and clock corrections from the international GNSS Monitoring and Assessment System(iGMAS)observations using the uncombined PPP model.The dual-frequency raw ambiguities are combined by the integer coefficients(4,−3)and(1,−1)to directly estimate the FCBs.The details of FCB estimation are described with the Global Positioning System(GPS),BeiDou-2 Navigation Satellite System(BDS-2)and Galileo Navigation Satellite System(Galileo).For the estimated FCBs,the Root Mean Squares(RMSs)of the posterior residuals are smaller than 0.1 cycles,which indicates a high consistency for the float ambiguities.The stability of the WL FCBs series is better than 0.02 cycles for the three GNSS systems,while the STandard Deviation(STD)of the NL FCBs for BDS-2 is larger than 0.139 cycles.The combined FCBs have better stability than the raw series.With the multi-GNSS FCB products,the PPP AR for GPS/BDS-2/Galileo is demonstrated using the raw observations.For hourly static positioning results,the performance of the PPP AR with the three-system observations is improved by 42.6%,but only 13.1%for kinematic positioning results.The results indicate that precise and reliable positioning can be achieved with the PPP AR of GPS/BDS-2/Galileo,supported by multi-GNSS satellite orbit,clock,and FCB products based on iGMAS.