Introduction to ALOS Typhoon/Hurricane Sea Surface Wind Products and Their Validation Using T-PARCII Dropsonde ObservationsUdai SHIMADA, TADONO Takeo, OHKI Masato, SOBUE Shinichi (Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency, JAXA), ISOGUCHI Osamu (RESTEC), IKUTA Yasutaka, KOHNO Nadao, YANASE Wataru, TSUJINO Satoki, and YAMAGUCHI MunehikoMeteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, Japan |
| Aircraft observations of tropical cyclones (TCs) are essential not only for improving TC forecasts through data assimilation and a better understanding of TC structures, but also for developing and validating spaceborne remote sensing products that are routinely available. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Meteorological Research Institute of Japan Meteorological Agency (MRI/JMA) are currently developing new L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) wind products for TC monitoring using the Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2/3 (PALSAR-2/3) aboard the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2/4 (ALOS-2/4). For the development of the L-band SAR sea surface wind products, Stepped Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR) surface winds observed by aircraft have been used as the ocean truth. However, recent studies have found that SFMR winds exhibit a positive bias at high wind speeds. Therefore, to validate the ALOS wind products and improve their quality, the use of dropsonde observations obtained near the time of ALOS acquisitions is highly desirable. In this presentation, we introduce the development status of ALOS sea surface wind products and report the progress of a validation study using T-PARCII dropsonde observations. |