This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 640276.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 640276.
Land surface emissivity atlases in the infrared region (3-17 μm) are required for the validation of infrared satellite sounding measurements over land. Work is underway, outside of the GAIA-CLIM project, to develop dynamic atlases of spectral emissivity in this part of the spectrum, based on measurements from polar-orbiting hyper-spectral infrared observations and using a rapidly updating Kalman Filter. However, these new dynamic atlases need to be validated to ensure the estimates have robust uncertainties associated with them.
G4.10 should be addressed with G4.01
Argument: Gap 4.01 is concerned with the use of NWP fields for the validation of observations relating to temperature and humidity, This gap (G4.10) identifies one component of the challenge described in G4.01, and affects temperature and humidity sounding measurements in the boundary layer and lower troposphere over land.
G4.08 and G4.09 can be addressed independently of G4.10
Passive-infrared observations from satellite radiometers operating in the spectral range from 17-3.3 µm are widely used to make remote-sensing measurements of the Earth’s atmosphere and surface characteristics. Vertical profiles of humidity and temperature and surface properties such as skin temperature are derived from measurements in this spectral region. The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) spectral signals in this range can, depending on the state of the atmosphere, comprise a significant component due to emission and reflection from the land or ocean surface. It is therefore critical that validated models of (ocean and land) surface emissivity are available for the analysis of these infrared observations. This requirement, for validated models of emissivity, spans applications ranging from the assimilation of Level-1 products (for example) in reanalysis efforts, to the generation of Level-2 (and higher) products at all levels of maturity ranging from near-real-time operational products to climate data records.
There are particular challenges to representing the emissivity of land surfaces. In contrast to the ocean, where the physical mechanisms governing the surface emission can be parameterised, the infrared land surface emission is highly dependent on properties such as land-surface coverage (vegetation, bare soil, snow and so on), roughness and moisture content. These properties may change slowly (seasonally) or rapidly (daily). As a result, it has become necessary to rely on infrared land surface emissivity atlases, which characterize in a gridded fashion the global variations in emissivity at different frequencies.
There are several notable examples of publicly available atlases. The ASTER Global Emissivity Dataset has been compiled using cloud free scenes from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer on the Terra satellite. Monthly emissivity maps at 5 km spatial resolution are available for the years 2000-2015 (Hulley et al., 2015). Validation with laboratory spectra from four desert sites resulted in an absolute error of approximately 1%.
Capelle et al. (2012) applied a multispectral method for the retrieval of emissivity and surface temperature from IASI clear sky fields of view. They obtained a high spectral resolution product over the tropics for the period 2007-2011. The product was validated against emissivity spectra retrieved with an airborne interferometer (Thelen et al., 2009) to within an absolute accuracy of 2%.
Borbas et al. (2007) developed the UWIREMIS global land surface emissivity atlas for the 3.7 to 14.3 µm range. The atlas was derived by regressing the MODIS operational land surface emissivity product against laboratory emissivity spectra. At the Met Office, the UWIREMIS atlas is used as a first guess in the 1-D variational retrieval of surface emissivity for IASI observations over land.
The use of infrared emissivity atlases in NWP models is evolving. At the Met Office, work is underway to incorporate emissivity estimates derived from sounders such as IASI into a dynamically updated atlas (Gray, 2016). By using a Kalman filter approach, it is intended that the atlas can be updated in near-real-time as new observations become available. Thus, it would be able to capture short term emissivity variations in a way that static atlases cannot. This methodology is promising; however, such atlases need to be validated to make sure the retrieved values have robust uncertainties associated with them.
AIRS on Aqua; CrIS on NOAA JPSS satellites; HIRAS, GIIRS on Chinese Feng-Yun series; IRS on future Meteosat Third Generation satellites
Identified benefit | User category/Application area benefitted | Probability of benefit being realised | Impacts |
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Resolution of this gap will enable greater use of surface-sensitive satellite observations over land in NWP data assimilation systems (either by permitting the use of extra channels, or giving greater weight to existing observations). |
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| Potential improvements in ERA near-surface analyses; improved confidence in projected impacts. |
Broader usability of ECV parameters |
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| Greater confidence in ECV parameters derived from passive infrared sensors, such as land surface radiation budget. |
Identified risk | User category/Application area at risk | Probability of risk being realised | Impacts |
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Sub-optimal validation of new EO data |
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| Less confidence in findings based on observational data of unknown quality over land. Sub-optimal (slower) evolution of the community’s understanding of the quality of key measured datasets |
High uncertainties associated with surface emissivity modelling |
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| The error component associated with surface emission modeling remains large and dominates the error budget for these observations, thereby limiting the weight given to these observations in climate reanalyses - consequently limiting the accuracy of NWP and reanalysis based analyses of lower tropospheric humidity and temperature over land This will have knock-on effects on attempts to predict regionally resolved impacts of climate change. |
TRL4
There is a need to establish a comprehensive set of dynamic land surface infrared emissivity atlases. It is first required to perform an intercomparison of available emissivity models to ascertain their potential strengths and weaknesses and highlight where the greatest uncertainties exist. It is then necessary to coordinate airborne campaigns to validate land-emissivity models in the infrared-spectral region with a special focus on those domains where current models are most uncertain. The resulting improved infrared emissivity atlases should be made openly available in usable formats and broadly advertised. Peer-reviewed publications are likely to be required to build confidence in and raise awareness of these products.
There is a need to establish a comprehensive set of dynamic land surface infrared emissivity atlases. The resulting improved infrared emissivity atlases should be made openly available in usable formats and broadly advertised.
Publicly available, open-source, dynamic (daily) spectral emissivity atlases in the infrared (3-17 μm). Documented, quantitative evaluation of infrared land surface emissivity atlases and models with respect to measurements of land-surface emissivity obtained during airborne campaigns, for a globally representative range of surfaces.