Joseph J. Michalsky — NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory/Global Monitoring Division & CU-Boulder/Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Gary B. Hodges — NOAA- Earth System Research Laboratory
Category
Instruments
Description
In this figure all of the instruments are well-calibrated pointing instruments except the mfr584, which is the thermopile MFRSR in the study. In this preliminary plot, the other MFRSRs’ data in the FRC III were not yet available. The analysis continues.
In conjunction with the eleventh International Pyrheliometer Comparison (IPC XI) held in Davos, Switzerland, from September 27 to October 15, 2010, the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos/World Radiation Center (PMOD/WRC) also conducted the 3rd Filter Radiometer Comparison (FRC III). Two refurbished ARM multifilter rotating shadowband radiometers (MFRSRs) were included in the comparison, along with a new version of the MFRSR that uses a thermopile sensor for broadband solar measurements replacing the silicon photodiode that is used in the earlier (and all of ARM’s) MFRSRs. The unprecedented temperature stability, required to successfully operate the thermopile, also improves the narrowband filter measurements significantly. At the conclusion of the measurement period, a nagging heater problem was discovered with one of the ARM MFRSRs, although it was functioning when shipped to Davos, rendering its data suspect and untrustworthy. All the participating instruments were compared to a group of precision filter radiometers (PFRs) that are owned and operated by the World Radiation Center. Initial results show that the MFRSRs compare favorably to the reference group, and are, in fact, within the limits set by the FRC II working group in the previous comparison, i.e., ±0.005 + 0.01/air mass.
Other participating instrument makes and models were:
