Radiance uncertainty characterisation to facilitate climate data record creation

Merchant, C. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4687-9850, Holl, G., Mittaz, J. P. D. and Woolliams, E. R. (2019) Radiance uncertainty characterisation to facilitate climate data record creation. Remote Sensing, 11 (5). 474. ISSN 2072-4292 doi: 10.3390/rs11050474

Abstract/Summary

The uncertainty in a climate data records (CDRs) derived from Earth observations in part derives from the propagated uncertainty in the radiance record (the fundamental climate data record, FCDR) from which the geophysical estimates in the CDR are derived. A common barrier to providing uncertainty-quantified CDRs is the inaccessibility to CDR creators of appropriate radiance uncertainty information in the FCDR. Here, we propose radiance uncertainty information designed directly to facilitate estimation of propagated uncertainty in derived CDRs at full resolution and in gridded products. Errors in Earth observations are typically highly structured and complex, and the uncertainty information we propose is of intermediate complexity, sufficient to capture the main variability in propagated uncertainty in a CDR, while avoiding unfeasible complexity or data volume. The uncertainty and error correlation characteristics of uncertainty are quantified for three classes of error with different propagation properties: independent, structured and common radiance errors. The meaning, mathematical derivations, practical evaluation and example applications of this set of uncertainty information are presented.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/82493
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	MDPI
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