Estimating Ice Water Path in Tropical Cyclones With Multispectral Microwave Data From the FY-3B Satellite

Ice water path (IWP) is an important parameter to characterize tropical cyclones. The FY-3B satellite, with multiple passive microwave sensors onboard, offers a unique opportunity to monitor the variation of cloud IWP during the evolution of tropical cyclones. In this paper, by using the combined simultaneous measurements of the MicroWave atmospheric Humidity Sounder and MicroWave Radiometer Imager on FY-3B satellite, an improved IWP algorithm for tropical clouds is developed. The new algorithm seeks to better estimate ice-free background brightness temperature at 150 GHz using simultaneous observations at low microwave frequencies. This approach improves IWP retrieval accuracy particularly for high IWP clouds that often associated with tropical cyclones. The current algorithm was applied to FY-3B observations of two typhoons with different strengths, and the characteristics of IWP variation at the storms' different evolution stages were investigated. The results showed that IWP tends to vary ahead of the storm intensification or decay, suggesting that IWP can be potentially used to predict the change of storm intensity.