Viju O. John

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Verified

Viju verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Climate Product Expert at European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT)

The Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) are the baseline for establishing and maintaining a global observing system that critically contributes to characterizing Earth’s climate. The ECVs describe parts of the physical, chemical, and biological Earth...

Plain Language Summary India, like many other regions worldwide, is experiencing extreme weather. Traditionally dry areas are now receiving more rain, while typically rainy areas are seeing less. Additionally, intense rainfall events are increasing, leaving people uncertain on how to adapt. Reports like those from the IPCC, project up to a 20% incr...

Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) are nearly continuous wind data estimated using satellites, derived from tracking cloud movements and water vapour gradients via sequential geostationary or polar satellite imagery. AMVs have been an integral part of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) since the early years, and hence, ensuring their quality is of u...

The west coast of India has recently been experiencing torrential monsoon rains, a trend that studies indicate is likely to continue under future warming scenarios. This study investigates the link between moisture flux and extreme rainfall over the west coast, using observational and reanalysis datasets for the monsoon seasons (June to September)...

In the tropics, deep convection, which is often organized into convective systems, plays a crucial role in the water and energy cycles by significantly contributing to surface precipitation and forming upper-level ice clouds. The arrangement of these deep convective systems, as well as their individual properties, has recently been recognized as a...

Most coupled model simulations substantially overestimate tropical tropospheric warming trends over the satellite era, undermining the reliability of model-projected future climate change. Here we show that the model-observation discrepancy over the satellite era has arisen in large part from multi-decadal climate variability and residual biases in...

The work performed in this study evaluated the application of generalised pre-trained object detection models for the identification and classification of Tropical Storm (TS) systems through transfer learning. While the majority of literature focuses on developing bespoke models for this application, these typically require significantly more train...

This study focuses on the changes in the upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) associated with two different extreme precipitation conditions for the period 2000–2019 over the Indian summer monsoon region. The analysis embodies UTH datasets derived from microwave sounders on‐board NOAA and MetOp‐A polar‐orbiting satellites. The circulation characterist...

Climate services are largely supported by climate reanalyses and by satellite Fundamental (Climate) Data Records (F(C)DRs). This paper demonstrates how the development and the uptake of F(C)DR benefit from radiance simulations, using reanalyses and radiative transfer models. We identify three classes of applications, with examples for each applicat...

The spectral long-wave feedback parameter represents how Earth’s outgoing long-wave radiation adjusts to temperature changes and directly impacts Earth’s climate sensitivity. Most research so far has focused on the spectral integral of the feedback parameter. Spectrally resolving the feedback parameter permits inferring information about the vertic...

Climate services are largely supported by satellite Climate Data Records (CDRs). This paper demonstrates how CDR development and uptake benefit from simulations. We identify three classes of application. Using global reanalyses and an offline radiance simulator, we provide three examples for each application class. The first application is to valid...

Four upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) datasets derived from satellite sounders are evaluated to assess their consistency as part of the activities for the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) water vapor assessment project. The datasets include UTH computed from brightness temperature measurements of the 183.31±1 GHz channel of the Special Se...

Four upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) datasets derived from satellite sounders are evaluated to assess their consistency as part of the activities for the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) water vapor assessment project. The datasets include UTH computed from brightness temperature measurements of the 183.31 ± 1 GHz channel of the Special...

Global‐scale changes in water vapor and responses to surface temperature variability since 1979 are evaluated across a range of satellite and ground‐based observations, a reanalysis (ERA5) and coupled and atmosphere‐only CMIP6 climate model simulations. Global‐mean column integrated water vapor increased by 1%/decade during 1988–2014 in observation...

Aeolus is European Space Agency’s unique and novel wind measuring satellite mission providing near real time wind profiles from near surface to an altitude of 30 km. This paper presents the validation of Aeolus wind profiles over Cochin (10.04◦ N, 76.9◦E), India using the 205 MHz wind profile radar. The Aeolus wind profiles (baselines 10 and 11) ha...

Preprint version, the final open access version is available here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2022JD036728

We investigated various aspects of the in-orbit performance of a Spinning Enhanced Visible Infra-Red Imager (SEVIRI) on Meteosat-10 (launch: 05 Jul 2012) and -11 (launch: 15 Jul 2015) with images, where Mercury or Venus stood close to earth. These objects are of similar or smaller size than the instantaneous field of view, and therefore they are we...

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are the most destructive weather systems that form over the tropical oceans, with about 90 storms forming globally every year. The timely detection and tracking of TCs are important for advanced warning to the affected regions. As these storms form over the open oceans far from the continents, remote sensing plays a crucial...

p>We investigated various aspects of the in-orbit performance of SEVIRI on Meteosat-10 (launch: 05 Jul 2012) and -11 (launch: 15 Jul 2015) with images, where Mercury or Venus appeared in a corner. These objects are of similar or smaller size than the instantaneous field of view, and therefore they are well suited for checks of geometric requirement...

p>We investigated various aspects of the in-orbit performance of SEVIRI on Meteosat-10 (launch: 05 Jul 2012) and -11 (launch: 15 Jul 2015) with images, where Mercury or Venus appeared in a corner. These objects are of similar or smaller size than the instantaneous field of view, and therefore they are well suited for checks of geometric requirement...

div> Tropical cyclones (TCs) are the most destructive weather systems that form over the tropical oceans, with 90 storms forming globally every year. The timely detection and tracking of TCs are important for advanced warning to the affected regions. As these storms form over the open oceans far from the continents, remote sensing plays a crucial...

div> Tropical cyclones (TCs) are the most destructive weather systems that form over the tropical oceans, with 90 storms forming globally every year. The timely detection and tracking of TCs are important for advanced warning to the affected regions. As these storms form over the open oceans far from the continents, remote sensing plays a crucial...

Diurnal cycle of deep convective clouds (DCC) over the Indian Summer Monsoon Region is studied. A harmonic analysis has been applied on the 3 hourly deep convective cloud fraction estimated from satellite observations to derive diurnal and semi-diurnal amplitudes of deep convective clouds. The diurnal cycle of deep convective clouds shows seasonal...

Historical data records support climate reanalysis activities and climate research. This brings about additional difficulty as compared to contemporary data. Indeed, improvements in instrument design and data processing have solved many of the issues that affected pioneering instruments. In addition, contemporary instrument data are also more numer...

We generated a new Climate Data Record (CDR) of Upper Tropospheric Humidity (UTH) based on observations from the microwave sounders Special Sensor Microwave Temperature - 2 (SSMT-2), Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit - B (AMSU-B) and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS). The data record covers the time period between 1994 and 2017 and provides monthly m...

The Global Space-based Inter-Calibration System (GSICS) routinely monitors the calibration of various channels of Earth-observing satellite instruments and generates GSICS Corrections, which are functions that can be applied to tie them to reference instruments. For the infrared channels of geostationary imagers GSICS algorithms are based on compar...

Abstract Opportunistic constant target matching is a new method for satellite intercalibration. It solves a long‐standing issue with the traditional simultaneous nadir overpass (SNO) method, namely, that it typically provides only data points with cold brightness temperatures for humidity sounding instruments on sun‐synchronous satellites. In the n...

Now that the Earth has been monitored by satellites for more than 40 years, Earth observation images can be used to study how the Earth system behaves over extended periods. Such long-term studies require the combination of data from multiple instruments, with the earliest datasets being of particular importance in establishing a baseline for trend...

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [...]

Subtropical dry zones, located in the Hadley cells’ subsidence regions, strongly influence regional climate as well as outgoing longwave radiation. Changes in these dry zones could have significant impact on surface climate as well as on the atmospheric energy budget. This study investigates the behaviour of upper tropospheric dry zones in a changi...

The 183 GHz measurements from microwave (MW) sounders constitute necessary humidity information for both assimilation to reanalyses and creation of Thematic Climate Data Records (TCDRs). For this reason, a new Fundamental Climate Data Record (FCDR) has been developed by EUMETSAT for the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). This FCDR has been ge...

Now that the Earth has been monitored by satellites for more than 40 years, Earth Observation images can be used to study how the Earth system behaves over extended periods. Such long-term studies require the combination of data from multiple instruments, with the earliest data sets being of particular importance in establishing a baseline for tren...

Climate services are becoming the backbone to translate climate knowledge, data & information into climate-informed decision-making at all levels, from public administrations to business operators. It is essential to assess the technical and scientific quality of the provided climate data and information products, including their value to users, to...

Infrared sounding measurements of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), and High-resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder/2 (HIRS/2) instruments are used to recalibrate infrared (IR; ~11 µm) channels and water vapor (WV; ~6 µm) channels of the Visible and Infrared Spin Scan Radiometer (VISSR), Ja...

This study presents a common recalibration method that has been applied to geostationary imagers’ infrared (IR) and water vapour (WV) channel measurements, referred to as the multi-sensor infrared channel calibration (MSICC) method. The method relies on data of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI), Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (A...

This paper presents a new Fundamental Climate Data Record (FCDR) for the visible (VIS) channel of the Meteosat Visible and Infrared Imager (MVIRI), with pixel-level metrologically traceable uncertainties and error covariance estimates. MVIRI has flown onboard Meteosat First Generation (MFG) satellites between 1982 and 2017. It has served the weathe...

Can we build stable Climate Data Records (CDRs) spanning several satellite generations? This study outlines how the ClOud Fractional Cover dataset from METeosat First and Second Generation (COMET) of the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Climate Monitoring (CM SAF) was created for the 25-year period 1991–2015. Modern multi-spectral cloud d...

A strengthening of the Pacific Walker circulation (PWC) over recent decades triggered an intense debate on the validity of model-projected weakening of the PWC in response to anthropogenic warming. However, limitations of in situ observations and reanalysis datasets have hindered an unambiguous attribution of PWC changes to either natural or anthro...

To date, there is no long-term, stable, and uncertainty-quantified dataset of upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) that can be used for climate research. As intermediate step towards the overall goal of constructing such a climate data record (CDR) of UTH, we produced a new fundamental climate data record (FCDR) on the level of brightness temperature...

Meteosat First-Generation satellites have acquired more than 30 years of observations that could potentially be used for the generation of a Climate Data Record. The availability of harmonized and accurate a Fundamental Climate Data Record is a prerequisite to such generation. Meteosat Visible and Infrared Imager radiometers suffer from inaccurate...

In 2017, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth's atmosphere-carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide-reached new record highs. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth's surface for 2017 was 405.0 ± 0.1 ppm, 2.2 ppm greater than for 2016 and the highest in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice cor...

Global dynamical reanalyses of the atmosphere and ocean fundamentally rely on observations, not just for the assimilation (i.e., for the definition of the state of the Earth system components) but also in many other steps along the production chain. Observations are used to constrain the model boundary conditions, for the calibration or uncertainty...

We present a new closure study between radiosonde and microwave satellite humidity measurements. The radiosonde data are from the Global Climate Observing System Reference Upper-Air Network. The satellite data are from the radiometers: MHS, Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder, and Sondeur Atmosphérique du Profil d'Humidité Intertropicale par Radi...

The microwave humidity sounders Special Sensor Microwave Water Vapor Profiler (SSMT-2), Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B) and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) to date have been providing data records for 25 years. So far, the data records lack uncertainty information essential for constructing consistent long time data series. In this stu...

The European Reanalysis of Global Climate Observations 2 (ERA-CLIM2) is a European Union Seventh Framework Project started in January 2014 and due to be completed in December 2017. It aims to produce coupled reanalyses, which are physically consistent datasets describing the evolution of the global atmosphere, ocean, land surface, cryosphere, and t...

Upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) contributes significantly to the atmospheric greenhouse effect by having a strong influence on the outgoing longwave radiation. UTH can be measured either by radiosondes or satellite instruments. However, the radiosonde humidity measurements can suffer from significant biases in the upper troposphere. Satellite obs...

The CORE-CLIMAX project has delivered methods and assessments of the capability to provide Climate Data Records, processes to derive and validate these records, and to feed-back lessons learnt from reanalysis. ‘The COordinating Earth observation data validation for RE-analysis for CLIMAte ServiceS’ project (CORE-CLIMAX) aimed to substantiate how C...

The microwave humidity sounders Special Sensor Microwave Water Vapour Profiler (SSMT-2), Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B) and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) to date have been providing data records for 25 years. So far, the data records lack uncertainty information essential for constructing consistent long time data series. In this st...

Ch 7. Regional Climates: f. Europe and the Middle East

To better understand the impacts of climate change, environmental monitoring capabilities must be enhanced by deploying additional and more accurate satellite- and ground-based (including in situ) sensors. In addition, reanalysis of observations collected decades ago but long forgotten can unlock precious information about the recent past. Historic...

Aerosol–cloud interactions are the largest source of uncertainty in the radiative forcing of the global climate. A phenomenon not included in the estimates of the total net forcing is the potential increase in upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) by anthropogenic aerosols via changes in the microphysics of deep convection. Using remote sensing data ov...

The near-global and all-sky coverage of satellite observations from microwave humidity sounders operating in the 183 GHz band complement radiosonde and aircraft observations and satellite infrared clear-sky observations. The Special Sensor Microwave Water Vapor Profiler (SSM/T-2) of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program began operations late...

Aerosol-cloud interactions are the largest source of uncertainty in the radiative forcing of the global climate. A phenomenon not included in the estimates of the total net forcing is the potential increase in upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) by anthropogenic aerosols via changes in the microphysics of deep convection. Using remote sensing data ov...

This review paper discusses how to develop, produce, sustain, and serve satellite climate data records (CDRs) in the context of transitioning research to operation (R2O). Requirements and critical procedures of producing various CDRs, including Fundamental CDRs (FCDRs), Thematic CDRs (TCDRs), Interim CDRs (ICDRs), and climate information records (C...

The diurnal cycle of upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) is known to be influenced by such processes as convection and the formation of clouds which are parameterized in current global climate models. In this study, we evaluate the performance of two climate models, the Community Atmospheric Model version 5 (CAM-5) and the Global Atmosphere 3.0 (GA-3...

We present a comparison of a reference and a fast radiative transfer model using numerical weather prediction profiles for the Zeeman-affected high-altitude Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder channels 19–22. We find that the models agree well for channels 21 and 22 compared to the channels' system noise temperatures (1.9 and 1.3 K, respectivel...

We assess the consistency of the satellite-based observations of upper tropospheric water vapor (UTWV) by comparing brightness temperature measurements from the channel 12 of High-Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS), the 183.31 ± 1 GHz channel of Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B (AMSU-B)/Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS), and spectral rad...

Description of the work on microwave humidity sounder FCDRs in the FIDUCEO (FIDelity and Uncertainty in Climate data records from Earth Observations) project

We present a comparison of a reference and a fast radiative transfer model using numerical weather prediction profiles for the Zeeman-affected high altitude Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder channels 19–22. We find that the models agree well for channels 21 and 22 compared to the channels' system noise temperatures (1.9 and 1.3 K, respectivel...

Upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) has been derived using a 'brightness temperature (Tb) transformation' method from the humidity sounder channels of SAPHIR payload on-board Megha-Tropiques (MT). These channels are very close to the water vapour absorption peak at 183.31 GHz. The channel at 183.31 ± 0.2 GHz enables retrieval of humidity up to the hi...

In the field of Software Engineering the Capability Maturity Model is used to evaluate and improve software development processes. The application of a Maturity Matrix is a method to assess the degree of software maturity. This method was adapted to the maturity of Earth System data in scientific archives. The application of such an approach to Cli...

The Sondeur Atmosphérique du Profil d’Humidité Intertropicale par Radiométrie (SAPHIR) instrument on board the Megha-Tropiques (MT) platform is a cross-track, multichannel microwave humidity sounder with six channels near the 183.31-GHz water vapor absorption line, a maximum scan angle of 42.96° (resulting in a maximum incidence angle of 50.7°), a...

The Sondeur Atmosphérique du Profil d'Humidité Intertropicale par Radiométrie (SAPHIR) instrument on board the Megha-Tropiques (MT) platform is a cross-track, multichannel microwave humidity sounder with six channels near the 183.31-GHz water vapor absorption line, a maximum scan angle of 42.968 (resulting in a maximum incidence angle of 50.78), a...

This paper analyzes the growing archive of 183-GHz water vapor absorption band measurements from the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit B (AMSU-B) and Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS) on board polar-orbiting satellites and document adjustments necessary to use the data for long-term climate monitoring. The water vapor channels located at 183.31 + 1 G...

A new version of the High-Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) upper tropospheric water vapor channel (channel 12) brightness temperature dataset is developed using intersatellite calibrated data. In this dataset, only those pixels affected by upper tropospheric clouds are discarded. Compared to the previous version that was based on column...

In this paper, the overall quality of the water vapor profiles of global operational radiosonde data for the period 2000-2009 is investigated using upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) retrieved from microwave satellite data. Overall, the nighttime radiosonde data showed a dry bias (- 5% to -15%) over Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and systematica...

[1] Three methods for intercalibrating humidity sounding channels are compared to assess their merits and demerits. The methods use the following: (1) natural targets (Antarctica and tropical oceans), (2) zonal average brightness temperatures, and (3) simultaneous nadir overpasses (SNOs). Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B instruments onboard the p...

Aerosol particles may increase the amount of water vapor in the upper troposphere via microphysical changes in deep convective clouds. In this study aerosol optical depth data from the MODIS instrument onboard the Aqua satellite have been studied together with upper tropospheric humidity data from microwave humidity sounder onboard the MetOp-A s...

We use multiple observations and climate model simulations to study upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) in tropical descent regions. A satellite simulator is used to generate UTH from model fields to ensure a like-to-like comparison. We have shown that HadGEM2 is generally able to reproduce the patterns and magnitude of UTH in these regions. In both...

[1] Simultaneous all angle collocations (SAACs) of microwave humidity sounders (AMSU-B and MHS) on-board polar orbiting satellites are used to estimate scan-dependent biases. This method has distinct advantages over previous methods, such as that the estimated scan-dependent biases are not influenced by diurnal differences between the edges of the...

A new version of the upper tropospheric water vapor dataset is developed using intersatellite calibrated all-sky High-Resolution Infrared Radiation Sounder (HIRS) data. In this dataset, the majority of pixels that do not affect the water vapor processing in the upper troposphere are retained. Compared to the previous version that was based on colum...

We compare measurements of integrated water vapour (IWV) over a subarctic site (Kiruna, Northern Sweden) from five different sensors and retrieval methods: Radiosondes, Global Positioning System (GPS), ground-based Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, ground-based microwave radiometer, and satellite-based microwave radiometer (AMSU-B). A...

We compare measurements of integrated water vapour (IWV) over a subarctic site (Kiruna, Northern Sweden) from five different sensors and retrieval methods: Radiosondes, Global Positioning System (GPS), ground-based Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, ground-based microwave radiometer, and satellite-based microwave radiometer (AMSU-B). A...

Aerosol effects on shallow moist convection have been studied extensively in recent decades. Less is known about the effects of aerosols on deep convection with associated clouds extending to the top of the troposphere. Any possible changes in humidity at these high altitudes can significantly change the radiative properties of the atmosphere (Shin...