A Precipitation Detection Method for MWTS-II Radiance Assimilation in Typhoon Simulation

FY-3C Microwave Temperature Sounder II (MWTS-H) lacks observations at 23.8 GHz, 31 GHz and 89 GHz, making it difficult to remove the data contaminated by precipitation in assimilation. In this paper, a fast forward operator based on the Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM) was used to analyze the relationship between the observation minus background simulation (O-B) and the cloud fractions in different MWTS-II channels. In addition, based on the community Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) system, the radiation brightness temperature of the MWTS-II was assimilated in the regional Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model. In the process of assimilation, Visible and Infrared Radiometer (VIRR) cloud detection products were matched to MWTS-II pixels for precipitation detection. For typhoon No. 18 in 2014, impact tests of MWTS-II data assimilation was carried out. The results show that, though the bias observation minus analysis (O-A) of assimilated data can be reduced by quality control only with vertical bar O-B vertical bar < 3K; however, the O-A becomes much smaller while the precipitation detection is performed with F-virr < 0.9 (VIRR cloud fraction threshold of 0.9). Besides, the change of the environmental field around the typhoon is more conducive to make the simulated track closer to the observation. The 72-hour typhoon track simulation error also shows that, after the precipitation detection, the error of simulated typhoon track is significantly reduced, which reflects the validity of a precipitation detection method based on a double criterion of vertical bar O-B vertical bar < 3K and F-virr < 0.9.