Fengyun-3B Microwave Humidity Sounder (MWHS) data noise characterization and filtering using principle component analysis

MicroWave Humidity Sounder (MWHS) onboard both FY-3A and FY-3B satellites have three channels (channels 3-5) near 183 GHz water vapor absorption line. These channel frequencies are also used in other instruments such as Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B) and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) onboard MetOp and NOAA satellites. Both MWHS and MHS are cross-track scanners. In this study a comparison between the simulated brightness temperatures with MWHS measurements clearly shows that MWHS observations from the three sounding channels contain a scan angle dependent cohesive noise along the instrument scanline. This noise does not cancel out when a large amount of data over a sufficiently long period of time is averaged, which eliminates the possibility of such a noise to arise from natural variability of the atmosphere and the surface. The noises are around 0.3, 0.2, and 0.2 K for channels 3-5, respectively. A principle component analysis is used for the characterization of this cohesive noise using one-month FY-3B MWHS data. It is shown that the MWHS cohesive noise is contained primarily in the first PC mode, which mainly describes a scan angle dependent brightness temperature variation, i.e., a unique feature of cross-tracking instrument. The 1st PC accounts for more than 99.91% total variance in the three MWHS sounding channels. A five-point smoother is then applied to the first PC, which effectively removes such a data noise in MWHS data. The reconstruction of the MWHS radiance spectra using the noise-filtered first PC component is of good quality. The scan angle dependent bias from reconstructed MWHS data becomes more uniform and is consistent with NOAA-18 MHS data.