Abstract:
The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Polar Pathfinder Twice-Daily 5 km EASE-Grid Composites are a collection of products for both poles, consisting of twice-daily calibrated and gridded satellite channel data and derived parameters. Data include five AVHRR channels, clear sky surface broadband albedo and skin temperature, solar zenith angle, satellite elevation angle, sun-satellite ... relative azimuth angle, surface type mask, cloud mask, and Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) of acquisition. AVHRR Polar Pathfinder data extend pole ward from 48.4 degrees north and 53.2 degrees south latitudes, from 24 July 1981 through 30 June 2005. Data are in 1-byte and 2-byte integer grid format and are available by FTP. Note: Due to a problem with the NOAA-16 scan motor, all the channel data is shifted sporadically between 2001 and 2005, causing the channels to contain data from another channel; thus, the derived parameters also contain errors during this time-period. See Table 12 in the Error sources section of the guide document for specific dates.
Quality
Product validation is a continuing process that takes advantage of comparative data as they become available. Comparisons were made between AVHRR Polar Pathfinder clear sky skin temperatures and surface-based measurements obtained at the South Pole over a seven-day period in 1995. These field data were collected by Robert Stone of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences ... (CIRES) using a sled-mounted KT-19 pyrometer. Excluding observations when cloud cover was present, the agreement was generally within 0.5 kelvin. For data averaged over a four-hour period, temperatures were within 0.1 kelvin. A mean of -38.15 degrees Celsius for the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder observations, versus a mean of -38.25 degrees Celsius for the field data. Evaluations were also performed for the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder retrievals of surface albedo over the Greenland Ice Sheet through comparisons with albedo measured at 14 Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) around the Greenland Ice Sheet from January 1997 to August 1998. Results show that AVHRR-derived surface albedo values are, on average, 10 percent less than those measured by the AWS stations. However, station measurements tend to be positively biased by about four percent, and the differences in absolute albedo may be less, about six percent. In regions of Greenland where the albedo variability is small, such as the dry snow facies, the AVHRR albedo uncertainty exceeds the natural variability. Stroeve concluded that while further work is needed to improve the absolute accuracy of the AVHRR-derived surface albedo, the data provide temporally and spatially consistent estimates of the Greenland Ice Sheet albedo (Stroeve et al. 2001) and (Stroeve 2002). Analyses of the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder data, compared with data from the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) project, are in progress. See (Maslanik et al. 2000) for preliminary results. The cloud masking process was assessed and refined throughout the duration of the project to optimize the algorithm for the entire areas of coverage. Comparisons of areally-averaged cloud fractions from the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder Twice-daily 5 km EASE-Grid Composites with field observations at the SHEBA field site show that the AVHRR data were within nine percent of the cloud lidar/radar observations averaged from April to July 1998 with Pathfinder data underestimating cloud fraction relative to the field measurements. Differences in monthly means for this period ranged from 2 percent in June to 21 percent in July. Comparison of all-sky skin temperature and albedo values derived from the AVHRR Polar Pathfinder Twice-daily 5 km EASE-Grid Composites with SHEBA observations is described in (Maslanik et al. 2000). Other validation studies of surface temperature and albedo retrieval procedures included surface observations from a NOAA research site near Barrow, Alaska, 71.32 degrees north latitude, 156.61 degrees west longitude. Daily AVHRR data from a preliminary Pathfinder data set from mid-1992 to mid-1993 were used for this validation (Meier et al. 1997). Surface temperature estimates agreed with observations, with a correlation coefficient of 0.98, a bias of -0.97, and a RMSE of 4.70. For surface albedo, the bias (mean error) in the estimates was near zero, r=0.81, bias=0.00, RMSE=0.17, but the individual observations exhibited significant variability, attributed to surface inhomogeneity and retrieval scheme sensitivity to changes in atmospheric aerosol and water vapor amounts. Accuracies of the products are difficult to determine given the limited nature of existing case studies. Also, conditions vary substantially across the large product domains and over time. Plans are being developed to further define product accuracies for snow-covered areas, sea ice, and ice sheets. Based on studies to date, accuracies in general are approximately ± 2 kelvin for AVHRR-derived clear sky skin temperatures and ± 0.06 kelvin for albedo. Much of this error is likely due to uncertainties in the performance of the cloud detection methods. For clear sky conditions, accuracies for albedo and temperature products are expected to be in the range noted in the Greenland Barrow case studies. Data and related information will be updated as appropriate.
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