A Microwave Instrument for Temperature and Humidity Sounding from Geosynchronous Orbit.'

The first geostationary sensors produced dramatic images of storms on short time scales, permitting their evolution to be monitored as never before. Prediction of weather now benefits from numerical weather prediction models, which require temperature and humidity inputs from soundings. Significant weather is often located in cloudy areas where infrared (IR) soundings are degraded or fail, and since numerical weather models are often hypersensitive to such baroclinic regions, microwave sounders can improve predictions by providing needed data. Both theoretical studies and data from polar weather satellites make clear the superiority of combined IR and microwave sounder systems relative to either system operating alone [ 11.