Title: Investigating archival geostationary meteorological satellite data for tropical cyclone

reanalysis

Authors: Mark Broomhall, Ian Grant

Abstract:

High quality geostationary meteorological observations have been produced since the late
1970’s. Archival data have been recently been converted to McIDAS AREA format giving
continuous and continuing observations from 1981 in a single data format for the global
region centred on 140° east at the equator. In early 2010 a 30 year climatological record will
be available with the extensive spatial coverage that satellite observations afford.
This dataset provides a means to perform a re-analysis on tropical cyclones to determine if
the recent environmental warming trend has resulted in an increasing frequency of more
intense and damaging tropical cyclones. This re-analysis will have to consider biases caused
by differences in the techniques of analysis, frequency of observation and improvements in
the precision and accuracy of the instrumentation.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has geostationary satellite data from 5 GMS satellites
(GMS 1 – GMS 5), GOES-9 and MTSAT-1R and MTSAT-2. GMS 1 – GMS 4 have 2 channels,
GMS 5 has 4 channels and the other satellites have 5 channels. The range of different
channels, detector responses and sampling methods makes calibration a key issue for long-
term re-analysis.
This paper will focus on data produced from the GMS series given the differences in
bandwidths, calibration, frequency of observation and number of channels and how this
affects modern TC intensity analysis. It will compare these results with the HURSAT-B1
global dataset of tropical storms. This database has contributions from satellites spanning
the entire globe and all data has been cross-calibrated with AVHRR and HIRS to make it
uniform and consistent over time. This paper will give recommendations on the possible
outcomes of the use of HURSAT-B1 or archived GMS data for the BoM tropical cyclone re-
analysis project.