Evaluation of operational INSAT-3D UTH product, using Radiosonde, Meteosat-7 and NCEP Analysis

Abstract. Recently available satellite observations from the water vapor channel (6.5–7.1 μm) of the Imager on-board India's geostationary satellite, INSAT-3D have been used to estimate Upper Tropospheric Humidity (UTH). In this study, operationally retrieved UTH product has been compared and validated for the period of Jan–Jun, 2014, using in-situ and satellite measurements. In-situ measurements of UTH have been indirectly derived using humidity profiles obtained from a network of radiosonde stations from NOAA/ESRL database. Meteosat-7 UTH products have been used as satellite measurements. The validation of INSAT-3D UTH against UTH derived from radiosonde profiles shows reasonable agreement, with linear correlation coefficients ranging from 0.78 to 0.87 and the slope of the regression line ranging from 0.52 to 0.77. The UTH tends to overestimate observed humidity by ~4 % with RMS difference of ~12 %. Comparison of INSAT-3D UTH product with Meteosat-7 UTH product suggests a good match with RMS difference of 7.61% and a mean bias of −0.43 %, linear correlation coefficients varying from 0.88 to 0.93 and slope of the regression line varying from 0.64 to 1.08. The UTH products from INSAT-3D and Meteosat-7 have also been inter-compared by validating the two against the UTH derived from a set of collocated radiosonde observations. INSAT-3D UTH shows a RMSD of 10.65 % and bias of 0.78 % which matches very well with Meteosat-7 UTH with a RMSD of 10.31 % and bias of −0.53 %.