A 27-Year Climate Data Record of Intercalibrated Brightness Temperatures and Precipitation Estimates from the DMSP Microwave Imagers

A Fundamental Climate Data Record (FCDR) of intercalibrated brightness temperatures has been developed from the series of nine SSM/I and SSMIS window channel radiometers on board the DMSP satellite series. This 27+ year data record is suitable for producing global CDRs of a variety of geophysical products including precipitation over land and ocean, total precipitable water (TPW), cloud liquid water, and surface wind speed over oceans, snow cover over land, and ice extent and sea-ice concentrations over polar regions. In addition to the intercalibration of the SSMI(S) brightness temperatures, the FCDR development effort involved quality control of the data, improved geolocation and view angle information, reformatting and removal of duplicate data, and extensive documentation of the corrections/improvements. Corrections for solar and lunar intrusions, emissive antenna effects, scan-dependent biases, and other issues contributing to calibration biases have also been addressed. Using this FCDR data record, a global precipitation dataset has been produced using the operational retrieval algorithm developed for TRMM. The resulting data record will be discussed as well as ongoing development efforts for the recently launched Global Precipitation Mission (GPM).