Combination of Temperature and Humidity Profiles from a Scanning 5-mm Radiometer and MWR-Scaled Radiosondes During the 1999 Winter NSA/AAO Radiometer Experiment

Westwater, E.R.(a), Leuski, V.(a), and Racette, P.(b), CIRES, University of Colorado/NOAA-ETL (a), NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center (b)
Twelfth Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Science Team Meeting

A scanning 5-mm-wavelength radiometer was deployed during an Intensive Operating Periods (IOP) at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program's Cloud and Radiation Testbed (CART) facilities. at the North Slope of Alaska/Adjacent Arctic Ocean site near Barrow, Alaska, during March of 1999. One goal was to evaluate the ability of an oxygen-band 5-mm microwave radiometer for measuring sharp temperature inversions that are typical during arctic conditions. Preliminary data from the instrument were presented at the ARM Science Team meeting in 2001 (Leuski et al. 2001) In addition, the ARM Microwave Radiometer (23.8 and 31.65 GHz) provided Precipitable Water Vapor every 15 minutes. We used both ARM and National Weather Service time-interpolated radiosondes for initial guess profiles for combination with the 5-mm and MWR data, thus providing profiles every 15 minutes. For clear sky conditions, as determined from the ARM ceilometer, we compare the resulting retrievals with data from multi-channel millimeter wavelength radiometers that operated near 183 GHz.

Note: This is the poster abstract presented at the meeting; an extended version was not provided by the author(s).