Quality Control of Operational Physical Retrievals of Satellite Sounding Data

Abstract

Earlier work identified serious errors and biases in the operational temperature and moisture satellite retrievals produced by statistical methods. We show that similar errors and biases are found in the physical retrievals produced operationally since September 1988. We report experiments on quality control algorithms to deal with the errors in the satellite data. The quality control changes resulting from this work were implemented in the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) system in January 1989. The performance of the quality control changes in the period after the change has been satisfactory.