Speaker
Description
The Changing-Atmosphere Infra-Red Tomography Explorer (CAIRT) is one of four candidates for ESA’s Earth Explorer 11. It's imaging capabilities will be used to offer several independent measurement tracks across its swath and thus deliver, in combination with tomographic retrieval techniques, a true 3-D product with a high vertical resolution (down to 1km).
In this work, we will examine and showcase the 3-D spatial resolving capabilities of the instrument by describing the employed algorithms and the examining the 3-D resolution of the temperature product and selected trace gasses. Selected fields derived from non-linear and tomographic end-to-end simulations will be shown.
Gravity waves are essential drivers of the middle atmosphere circulation through drag deposited by their breaking and saturation. The 3-D capability of CAIRT allows to reproduce the spatial structure of gravity waves and thus a full quantification of orientation, direction, and amplitude. These parameters enable the computation of gravity wave momentum flux. An in depth study was performed to examine how well the gravity wave momentum flux present in NWP data, here assumed as truth, can be reproduced by simulated CAIRT observations. We will present the study design and the results.
