Infrared atmospheric sounding interferometer data information content; instrument characterization and the impact of a priori information

The use of linear estimation for the study of the information content of a given satellite radiance data set for temperature and humidity profile retrievals is first reviewed. A particular formulation of the retrieval approach is then used to obtain an intrinsic characterisation of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) data set, in terms of accuracy versus vertical resolution of retrieved profiles. The performance of the IASI instrument alone is analysed and compared to that of the currently-used HIRS-TOVS. The problem is then regularized by addition of a priori independent information to the initial data set. The potential use of IASI data for some particular choices of the a priori information associated with practical problems such as profile inversion or data assimilation for weather forecasting is analysed. The approach is finally used to derive an “empirical” objective framework to define the vertical discretization adapted to these problems.