THERMODYNAMIC PROFILING CAPABILITIES OF THE MICROWAVE RADIOMETER PROFILER IN VARIOUS LOCATIONS OF INTEREST FOR ATMOSPHERIC MODEL DEVELOPMENT

Description

The atmospheric modeling community has a critical need for observations of the thermodynamic state of the atmosphere that are spatially and temporally appropriate for application to the development and evaluation of atmospheric models. A promising solution that addresses this issue is to combine radiometric retrievals from a 12-channel microwave radiometer profiler (MWRP) and co-located radiosonde observations in a single data product. To utilize radiometric retrievals in this manner requires that the thermodynamic profiling capabilities of the MWRP be established in locations of interest to model developers. Data from six deployments of the first ARM Mobile Facility (AMF1) is used to estimate the uncertainty of thermodynamic profiles retrieved from MWRP observations by statistical comparison with co-located radiosonde observations. It was determined that the MWRP has the capability to provide thermodynamic profiles of sufficient quality to merge with radiosonde data for the use of atmospheric model development applications.