Abstract

By using the techniques developed by Huang and Purser, 1996, the information content density can be uniformly analyzed for both infrared and microwave remote sensing systems for various atmospheric retrieval profiles (e.g., temperature, water vapor, trace gases). In this paper, the information content of the forthcoming polar orbiting sounding systems, such as the Advanced TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder (ATOVS) and candidate instruments for the National Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), are presented. Temperature and water vapor information content profile densities are expressed in terms of Shannon’s Entropy Reduction (ER), a measure of the information gain in the atmospheric profile due to the satellite measurements, and the Degrees of Freedom for Signal (DFS), a value which quantifies the number of independent pieces of information inherent in the both the satellite measurements and the background.

© 1997 Optical Society of America