THE USEFULNESS OF MSU3 ANALYSES AS A FORECASTING AID - A STATISTICAL STUDY

A statistical analysis is performed on a 6-month global dataset consis ting of satellite-derived channel 3 Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU3) bri ghtness temperature and various conventionally derived fields to quant ify the potential usefulness of MSU3 analyses in the nowcasting and fo recasting of baroclinic waves. High positive spatial and temporal corr elations are obtained between the MSU3 brightness temperature and 400- 100-mb thickness fields over all wavelengths in the data. Slightly les ser positive correlations are found between the MSU3 and the 200-mb te mperature. The MSU3-500-mb and MSU3-50-mb height correlation results i ndicate a scale dependence in the hydrostatic spreading of thickness a nomalies in the vertical, Most significantly, relatively high negative MSU3-500-mb height correlations for the short (less than or equal to synoptic scale) wavelength portion of the data suggest that upper-leve l thermal anomalies are reflected downward and that MSU3 analyses can be used to track midlevel synoptic-scale baroclinic waves. This conclu sion is also supported by relatively high negative MSU3-500-mb vortici ty and MSU3-dynamic tropopause correlations along the climatological s torm tracks.