An Investigation of the Fengyun-4A/B GIIRS Performance on Temperature and Humidity Retrievals

The Fengyun-4A/B (FY-4A/B) geostationary satellite carries the Geostationary Interferometric Infrared Sounder (GIIRS). The instrument parameters of the GIIRS on FY-4A and FY-4B are not exactly the same, which is crucial for the atmospheric temperature and humidity measurements. The objective of this paper is to discuss the influence of spectral range on the retrieval for the FY-4A/B GIIRS. Firstly, we performed channel selection to choose the appropriate channels for retrieval. Then, the multiple cycling utilization of the physical retrieval method is proposed and conducted for improving the accuracy, and the retrieval results of FY-4A/B GIIRS are compared. Finally, perturbation analysis is performed to discuss the sensitivity of the retrieval to temperature perturbations due to the difference in spectral range between the two GIIRS. The results show the retrieval method can realize the improvement of the average accuracy by more than 0.9 K for temperature and 3.0% for humidity. As the spectral range widens, the retrieval accuracy of FY-4B GIIRS is superior to that of FY-4A GIIRS from 130 hPa to 400 hPa. Furthermore, perturbation analysis also shows the extension of the spectral range is beneficial to the retrieval. This study could offer the usefulness of current GIIRS instruments with observed on-orbit bias, and a reference for the parameter design of the subsequent instruments.