Original paper
Temperature and humidity profile retrievals from ground-based microwave radiometers during TUC
Cimini, Domenico; Hewison, Tim J.; Martin, Lorenz; Güldner, Jürgen; Gaffard, Catherine; Marzano, Frank S.
Meteorologische Zeitschrift Vol. 15 No. 1 (2006), p. 45 - 56
published: Feb 27, 2006
DOI: 10.1127/0941-2948/2006/0099
Open Access (paper may be downloaded free of charge)
Abstract
Thermodynamic atmospheric profiles have been retrieved from ground-based microwave radiometers during the Temperature, hUmidity, and Cloud (TUC) profiling campaign. A variety of inversion methods is presented, in terms of requirements, advantages, and limitations. Results confirm the theoretical expectation that retrievals' accuracy and resolution degrade steadily with height up to 3 km, then more rapidly. At higher levels the retrievals' accuracy does not improve on that of a Numerical Weather Prediction model, which provides a background for the variational technique. Most retrieval methods produce a bias in the temperature profile above 1 km, which may be due to a bias in the absorption model used and/or observations at 51-54 GHz. Elevation scanning is shown to improve the accuracy and resolution of the retrievals in the boundary layer, but is limited by technical shortcomings.