Description of Remote Sensing Systems version-7 geophysical data products

In 2010, Remote Sensing Systems completed a major update to its geophysical data products. Version-7 brings an unprecedented level of consistency to satellite retrievals of sea surface temperature, surface wind speed, columnar water vapor, columnar cloud liquid water, and surface rain rate over the ocean from the following passive microwave radiometers: SSM/I, SSMIS, WindSat, AMSR-E, and TMI. We will describe the changes made to instrument calibration, radiative transfer modeling, and retrieval methodology in Version-7; and show how these changes impact Version-7 retrievals relative to Version-6 retrievals. Water vapor has increased about 2% for vapor values above 50 mm, and the new vapor retrievals are in better agreement with GPS observations. The clear-sky bias in cloud water has been removed. Changes were made to the implementation of the beamfilling correction in the rain algorithm, which increased mean rain rates in the extratropics. Multi-decadal trends in wind and vapor have not changed in Version-7, however, trends in cloud and rain have decreased slightly. The causes of multi-decadal trend changes will be discussed. There is a minor change to the data format that we will describe – additional bins have been added to the low end of cloud water.