Preliminary Comparison of Temperature Soundings Obtained from Simultaneous Radiometric, Radio-Acoustic, and Rawinsonde Measurements

摘要

An experiment was conducted to compare the accuracy of atmospheric temperature soundings obtained simultaneously with a ground-based radio-acoustic sounding system (RASS), a ground-based microwave radiometric system, and a combined RASS/radiometric system at Denver, Colorado, during July and August of 1988. Applying a linear statistical retrieval technique to measurements from all three systems permitted three-way comparisons throughout the troposphere. Accuracy was evaluated by comparison with simultaneous in situ rawinsonde temperature measurements. Rms errors for the 22 sets of soundings compared ranged from 0.5 to 2.0 C, depending on altitude. The differences among the three systems were too small to conclude that the combined system performance was significantly better than that of either system alone.