Ground-based microwave atmospheric temperature and water vapor profilers

摘要

A temperature profiling radiometer based on a highly stable synthesizer, rather than traditionally used Gunn oscillators, has been designed and fabricated under contract to White Sands Missile Range. This profiler is capable of tuning a user-selected ensemble of frequencies in the range of 52.85 to 58.8 GHz as well as fixed water vapor and water channels at 23.8 and 31.4 GHz. This instrument weighs about 30kg and consumes about 200 watts. Because of the frequency stability of the receiver, and because of the large number of observing frequenices possible,improved profile accuracy and resolution is expected over Gunn-based temperature profilers.