Measuring sea-surface temperature for the MAGIC field campaign
Poster PDF
Authors
Victor R. Morris — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Laura Dian Riihimaki — Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Michael T. Ritsche — Argonne National Laboratory
Description
The second ARM Mobile Facility has been deployed aboard the container ship
Horizon Spirit for the Marine ARM GPCI Investigation of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign. A critical measurement for this over-ocean field campaign is the upwelling infrared emission, which can be determined by measuring the temperature of the sea surface. Different instruments are capable of making this measurement, but most are relatively expensive, such as the infrared sea-surface temperature Autonomous Radiometer (ISAR) or the marine atmospheric emitted radiance interferometer. For MAGIC, an inexpensive and simple (but less accurate) method of measuring sea-surface temperature is provided with two standard ARM infrared thermometers (IRTs). The two IRTs are orthogonally mounted such that one is measuring the ocean surface and the other is measuring the sky brightness temperature, so that the upwelling radiance can be corrected for the reflection of the downwelling radiance. A value-added product is under development to derive sea-surface temperature from the new IRT datastream. We will discuss the method used to calculate sea-surface temperature and compare the measurements with those from the ISAR.
