Boundary layer temperature profiles by a RASS and a microwave radiometer: Differences, limits and advantages

摘要

- This study focuses on the accuracy of the temperature profiles ob-tained with two different remote-sensing instruments: a Doppler Radio-Acoustic Sounding System (RASS) produced by Metek company, and a Microwave Radiome-ter Meteorological Temperature Profiler (MTP) produced by Kipp & Zonen com-pany. The inter-comparison experiment was carried out at the experimental field facility of the Institute, of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (ISAC) of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) located in the Rome suburbs. To considyi the bistatic configuration of the RASS antennas different formulas proposed in the Iit erature were applied and the results compared by using the in situ data given by a tethersonde. A comparison has been made between the BASS and MTP profiles, and their accuracy evaluated by using the tethersonde profiles as a reference. After having computed the absolute temperature from the BASS virtual temperature, the RASS and MTP temperature profiles were super-imposed to the multi-layer atmospheric thermal structure shown by the ISAC acoustic sounder (sodar) to un-derstand at which extent these techniques catch the fine-layer structure of the lower atmosphere.