Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Earth Observation Research Center ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Algorithm development PI: Dr. Guosheng Liu (Florida State University) |
This document briefly describes some caveats for the AMSR Level 2 standard products of precipitation.
Combinations of both emission and scattering signatures are used in retrieval algorithm. The algorithm retrieves rainfall over ocean and land areas except for the following surfaces: coastal (~25 km from coastal line), sea ice, snow-covered land, and desert areas. Separate algorithms are applied for over ocean and over land regions. Generally, retrievals over ocean have better quality than those over land. The sea ice flag is based on sea ice concentration retrievals from AMSR(-E) provided by the EOC integrated retrieval system. Snow-covered land and desert surface detection is based on AMSR brightness temperatures and embedded in the precipitation retrieval algorithm.
The algorithm uses the following ancillary datasets provided the integrated retrieval system: land-ocean flag, surface air temperature (GANAL) (to determine freezing level height), and sea ice concentration.
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