Comparison of ATMS Striping Noise Between NOAA-20 and S-NPP and Noise Impact on Warm Core Retrieval of Typhoon Jelawat (2018)

The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) is onboard both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-20 and the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellites. NOAA-20 has the same sun-synchronous orbit as that of the S-NPP, but is 50 min (i.e., half orbit) ahead. The striping noise is found in ATMS brightness temperature observations from both NOAA-20 and S-NPP. In this study, first, a striping noise detection and mitigation algorithm that was previously developed for striping noise mitigation in ATMS observations from S-NPP is adopted to characterize the striping noise in NOAA-20 ATMS brightness temperature measurements. It combines a principal component analysis and an ensemble empirical mode decomposition method. It is found that the magnitudes of both the striping noise and the random noise in NOAA-20 ATMS data are smaller than those in S-NPP ATMS data. Second, global positioning system radio occultation retrieved temperature profiles are used as the training dataset for ATMS hurricane warm core retrievals in order to investigate the impacts of the data noise. Numerical results are demonstrated using the case of Typhoon Jelawat (2018), which rapidly intensified from a Category 1 to a Category 4 super typhoon and weakened back to Category 1 within 24 h. Finally, we show that a half-orbit separation of NOAA-20 from S-NPP enables the rapidly evolving vertical structures of Typhoon Jelawat. This suggests an enhanced tropical cyclone monitoring capability offered by NOAA-20 and S-NPP for this hurricane season and a few following years.