Evaluation of brightness temperature from a forward model of ground-based microwave radiometer

Ground-based microwave radiometers are getting great attention in recent years due to their capability to profile the temperature and humidity at high temporal and vertical resolution in the lower troposphere. The process of retrieving these parameters from the measurements of radiometric brightness temperature (TB) includes the inversion algorithm, which uses the background information from a forward model. In the present study, an algorithm development and evaluation of this forward model for a ground-based microwave radiometer, being developed by Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER) of India, is presented. Initially, the analysis of absorption coefficient and weighting function at different frequencies was made to select the channels. Further the range of variation of TB for these selected channels for the year 2011, over the two stations Mumbai and Delhi is discussed. Finally the comparison between forward-model simulated TBs and radiometer measured TBs at Mahabaleshwar (73.66°E and 17.93°N) is done to evaluate the model. There is good agreement between model simulations and radiometer observations, which suggests that these forward model simulations can be used as background for inversion models for retrieving the temperature and humidity profiles