Unified Tropical Cyclone Database from Satellite Passive Microwave Measurements

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most destructive weather phenomena, which could lead to massive economic loss and death of human lives. Since TCs generate and develop over remote areas of the ocean where other meteorological instruments are rarely available, satellite instruments are often the only source for TC observations. The passive microwave (PMW) sensors onboard polar low earth orbit (LEO) satellites provide higher quality measurements than Infrared sensors onboard geostationary orbit (GEO) satellites. Satellite missions with conically scanning PMW sensors include: Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSMI) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS) onboard United States Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellites, NASA Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI) and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Microwave Imager (GMI), Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E), and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) onboard the JAXA Global Change Observation Mission –Water (GCOM-W1) satellite. There are differences of specifications and properties among these PMW sensors. The channels at 85-91 GHz frequencies are most important for detection of the TC convective clouds. However, there are notable differences of brightness temperatures (TBs) due to their frequency variations. In addition, all of these PMW sensors should be included in a TC TB database based on satellite PMW observations. A comprehensive TC TB database will be beneficial to the TC community for research and operational applications. This presentation will show how a unified TC TB database leveraging the available satellite conically scanning PMW sensors is created at the Naval Research Laboratory Marine Meteorology Division (NRL-MMD) with following processes: 1) use of the NASA PMM 1C_v7 dataset, 2) inter-sensor calibration of SSMI, SSMIS and TMI into 89 GHz for unified TBs at 89 GHz, 3) application of the Backus-Gilbert interpolation scheme on SSMI and SSMIS, 4) TC center fixing with the Automated Rotational Center Hurricane Eye Retrieval (ARCHER) scheme, and 5) demonstration of advantages of the unified TC TB database.