Precise climate monitoring using complementary satellite data sets

@article{citeulike:1710296, abstract = {Observations from Earth-orbiting satellites have been a key component in monitoring climate change for the past two decades. This has become possible with the availability of air temperatures from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) since 1979, sea surface temperatures from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) since 1982 and, most recently, measurements of atmospheric water vapour content from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) since 1987. Here we present a detailed comparison of each pair of these three time series, focusing on both interannual and decadal variations in climate. We find a strong association between sea surface temperature, lower-tropospheric air temperature and total column water-vapour content over large oceanic regions on both time scales. This lends observational support to the idea of a constant relative humidity model having a moist adiabatic lapse rate. On the decadal timescale, the combination of data sets shows a consistent warming and moistening trend of the marine atmosphere for 1987-1998.}, address = {Remote Sensing Systems, Santa Rosa, California 95401, USA. wentz@remss.com}, author = {Wentz, F. J. and Schabel, M. }, citeulike-article-id = {1710296}, doi = {10.1038/35000184}, issn = {1476-4687}, journal = {Nature}, keywords = {avhrr, climate, humidity, temperature}, month = {January}, number = {6768}, pages = {414--416}, posted-at = {2007-09-30 07:02:35}, priority = {2}, title = {Precise climate monitoring using complementary satellite data sets}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/35000184}, volume = {403}, year = {2000} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1710296 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1710296 TI - Precise climate monitoring using complementary satellite data sets JF - Nature VL - 403 IS - 6768 SP - 414 EP - 416 AD - Remote Sensing Systems, Santa Rosa, California 95401, USA. wentz@remss.com SN - 1476-4687 N2 - Observations from Earth-orbiting satellites have been a key component in monitoring climate change for the past two decades. This has become possible with the availability of air temperatures from the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) since 1979, sea surface temperatures from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) since 1982 and, most recently, measurements of atmospheric water vapour content from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) since 1987. Here we present a detailed comparison of each pair of these three time series, focusing on both interannual and decadal variations in climate. We find a strong association between sea surface temperature, lower-tropospheric air temperature and total column water-vapour content over large oceanic regions on both time scales. This lends observational support to the idea of a constant relative humidity model having a moist adiabatic lapse rate. On the decadal timescale, the combination of data sets shows a consistent warming and moistening trend of the marine atmosphere for 1987-1998. KW - avhrr KW - climate KW - humidity KW - temperature AU - Wentz, FJ AU - Schabel, M PY - 2000/01/27/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/35000184 ER -