Vertical profiles of heating derived from IR-based precipitation estimates during FGGE SOP-1

This paper examines a technique for retrieving from geostationary IR data the vertical profiles of heating and cooling due to moist diabatic processes. First, GOES IR imagery is used to estimate precipitation fields which are independent of fields inferred from residuals in heat budget analysis based on the FGGE level III-b data. Vertical distributions of the associated heating are then obtained using thermodynamic data from the level III-b analysis, one-dimensional cloud models, and the satellite-estimated precipitation. The technique was applied to infer heating in the South Pacific convergence zone during a portion of FGEE SOP-1, and the results were compared with heat-budget calculations made using the ECMWF analyses.