The Retrieval of Surface Atmospheric Pressure Over the Oceans Using 50–60 GHz and 118.75 GHz Passive Microwave Observations

This paper makes a comparison of the retrieval of sea level pressure using 50-60 GHz and 118.75 GHz passive microwave observations. The 50-60 GHz passive observations of the Microwave Temperature Sounder-II (MWTS-II) and 118.75 GHz observations of the Microwave Humidity and Temperature Sounder (MWHTS) onboard the Chinese Fengyun-3D (FY-3D) meteorological satellite were used to carry out the comparison. Based on neural network-based retrieval algorithm, sea surface atmospheric pressure retrieval models for MWTS-II and MWHTS were established, respectively. Passive microwave observations from January 2018 to October 2019 and the corresponding Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) Final (FNL) analysis data were used to develop and test the retrieval models. Results show that the accuracy of sea surface atmospheric pressure from MWTS-II retrieval is similar to that of the MWHTS retrieval for both usual weather conditions and tropical cyclone (TC) conditions. This provides a reference for high spatial resolution surface pressure observations by passive microwave instruments from low orbit satellites and high temporal resolution observations from geostationary orbit in the future.