A Technique for Direct Retrieval of Surface Specific Humidity Over Open Oceans from Irs-P4/Msmr Satellite Data

The Multi frequency Scanning Microwave Radiometer (MSMR) onboard Oceasat-1 was used to develop a retrieval method fornear-surface specific humidity by means of multivariate regressiontechnique. The MSMR measures the microwaveradiances in 8 channels at the frequencies of 6.6, 10.7, 18 and 21 GHzfor both vertical and horizontal polarizations. Regression coefficients were derived using the ship reports of the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (COADS) for the months of July, October and December, in 1999. Daily near-surface specific humidity data from COADS in 2° × 2° latitude/longitude bins and collocated brightness temperature data from MSMR were used to derive the coefficients. The derived coefficients werevalidated with humidity given in COADS.A linear relationship is established to determine the near-surface specifichumidity from MSMR brightness temperature (Tb) with an rms error of 1.2 g kg-1 for individual situations and an rms errorof 0.84 g kg-1 for monthly time scales over global oceans.The retrieval algorithm is validonly for the open sea regions.