Polar low study using satellite passive and active microwave remote sensing

An approach for detection and tracking polar lows is developed utilizing the data from two sensors: Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) onboard Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellite and Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) onboard Aqua satellite. This approach consists of two stages. At the first stage total atmospheric water vapor fields are retrieved from SSM/I and AMSRE-E measurement data using precise Arctic polar algorithms, developed at NIERSC. These algorithms are applicable over open water. They have high retrieval accuracies under a wide range of environmental conditions. Algorithms are based on numerical simulation of brightness temperatures and their inversion by means of Neural Networks. At the second stage the vortex structures are detected in these fields, Polar Lows are identified and tracked and some of their parameters are calculated. A few case studies are comprehensively conducted based on SSM/I and AMSRE-E measurements and using other satellite data including visible, infrared and SAR images, QuickScat Scatterometer wind fields, surface analysis maps and re-analysis data, which demonstrated the advantages of satellite passive microwave data usage in the Polar Low studies.