Great effort has been devoted towards validating geophysical parameters retrieved
from ultraspectral infrared radiances obtained from satellite remote sensors.
An error consistency analysis scheme (ECAS), utilizing fast radiative transfer
model (RTM) forward and inverse calculations, has been developed to estimate the
error budget in terms of mean difference and standard deviation of error in both
spectral radiance and retrieval domains. The retrieval error is assessed through
ECAS without relying on other independent measurements such as radiosonde
data. ECAS establishes a link between the accuracies of radiances and retrieved
geophysical parameters. ECAS can be applied to measurements from any ultraspectral
instrument and any retrieval scheme with its associated RTM. In this
manuscript, ECAS is described and demonstrated with measurements from the
MetOp-A satellite Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI). This
scheme can be used together with other validation methodologies to give a more
definitive characterization of the error and/or uncertainty of geophysical parameters
retrieved from ultraspectral radiances observed from current and future
satellite remote sensors such as IASI, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS),
and the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS).