In tropical cyclones, a strong inverse relationship exists between the magnitude of the upper-tropospheric warm anomaly (UTWA) and minimum sea level pressure (MSLP). Uniquely poised to capture this warming aloft, the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) flown aboard current National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polar-orbiting satellites is capable of observing Tropical Cyclones (TC's) worldwide. A physical/statistical MSLP estimation algorithm based on AMSU brightness temperature anomalies (dTbs) has been operating in an experimental mode at the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (UW-CIMSS) for two years. The algorithm relies on a single AMSU channel (54.9 GHz) and shows great promise as a viable TC analysis tool. However, the radiances can be susceptible to environmental variability leading to sub-sampling and errors in MSLP. The goal of this research is to improve the existing single-channel algorithm by introducing an additional channel (55.5 GHz) that seeks to capture the true magnitude of the UTWA in instances when the single channel fails. By implementing the multi-channel approach, the goal is to create an operationally viable satellite-based guidance tool to help support tropical forecast and analysis centers worldwide.

Accurate tropical cyclone (TC) intensity estimates are best achieved from satellite observations. The Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU) has operated since 1998 on polar-orbiting environmental satellites and is able to measure the warm temperature anomaly in the upper troposphere above a TC's center. Through hydrostatic equilibrium, this warm anomaly is roughly proportional to the TC's sea-level pressure anomaly. Based on this principle, the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) provides near real-time AMSU-based estimates of TC minimum sea-level pressure (MSLP) to forecast centers worldwide. These estimates are as accurate as the benchmark Dvorak technique, but are subject to error caused by precipitation effects (primarily brightness temperature reduction by scattering) on the AMSU 55 GHz channels sensitive to upper-tropospheric temperature. Simulated AMSU brightness temperatures (TB's) are produced by a polarized reverse Monte Carlo radiative transfer model using representative TC precipitation profiles. Results suggest that precipitation depression of high-frequency window channel TB's is correlated with depression of sounding channel TB's and can be used to correct for scattering effects on the AMSU channels used in TC intensity estimates. Analysis of AMSU data over the tropical oceans confirms this, and forms the basis for an empirical scattering correction using AMSU 31 and 89 GHz TB's. This scattering correction reduces CIMSS TC MSLP algorithm RMS error by 10% in a 7-year, 497 observation sample.