The AMSU Hydrological Product Suite

This paper describes the hydrological products derived from the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU). This instrument was launched aboard NOAA-15 on May, 1998 and was primarily designed to derive temperature profiles throughout the atmosphere (surface to about 1 mb). The AMSU contains 20-channels and is a replacement of the 4-channel Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and the Stratospheric Sounding Unit (SSU), which were first launched on TIROS-N in 1978. Temperature profiles are derived using 12-channels within the 50-60 GHz portion of the oxygen band. The AMSU also contains window channels at 23, 31 and 89 GHz to derive a number of hydrological parameters. These parameters include, total precipitable water (TPW), cloud liquid water (CLW), rain rate (RR), snow cover (SC) and sea ice concentration (SI). These parameters have been derived since 1987 using the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager and will be compared against the AMSU measurements. The TPW will also be compared against radiosonde data. .