Assimilating GCOM-W1/AMSR2 Brightness Temperature Measurements With GEOS-5 in All-sky Conditions

The Global Change Observation Mission - Water satellite (GCOM-W1) is part of the international Earth observation satellite constellation “A-Train”. It has been monitoring Earth’s water cycle, and sea surface temperature and wind with the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR2) instrument since 2012.  AMSR2 conducts conical scanning of microwave radiance with both horizontal and vertical polarization at frequencies between 6.9 - 89.0 GHz. NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) has been developing algorithms assimilating its brightness temperature measurements within the data assimilation system GSI order to improve GEOS-5’s weather and climatological analysis. In this talk, we will give examples of AMSR2 data quality control, present the observational data error, and discuss these data’s impact on moisture, clouds, and precipitation in GEOS-5’s analysis. A validation with other measurements will also be presented.