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ABSTRACT
Although current upper-air observing systems provide an impressive array of observations, many are deficient in observing the temporal evolution of the boundary layer thermodynamic profile. Ground-based remote sensing instruments such as the multichannel microwave radiometer (MWR) and Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) are able to provide profiles of temperature and water vapor through the boundary layer at 5-min resolution or better. Previous work compared these instruments through optimal-estimation retrievals on simulated clear-sky spectra to evaluate the retrieval accuracy and information content of each instrument. In this study, this method is duplicated using real observations from collocated MWR and AERI instruments from a field campaign in southwestern Germany. When compared with radiosondes, this study confirms the previous results that AERI retrievals are more accurate than MWR retrievals in clear-sky and below-cloud-base profiling. These results demonstrate that the AERI has nearly 2 times as much information as the MWR.
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1. Introduction
Several reports published by the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) have highlighted a goal for the atmospheric community: the development of a national network of ground-based boundary layer thermodynamic profilers (NRC 2009, 2010). Such a network would eliminate a significant gap in the abilities of the current set of U.S. upper-air observing platforms (primarily satellites and radiosondes) in continuously observing the boundary layer and would assist various atmospheric scientists in the public, private, and academic sectors in meeting their missions. Therefore, this network would need to sense variables such as temperature, humidity, and wind at high temporal, vertical, and spatial resolution.
Soon after the release of the NRC reports, efforts to identify current technologies that would meet the NRC requirements were begun. One workshop, funded by the National Weather Service and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, identified several ground-based passive and active remote sensing technologies that could constitute such a network (Hoff and Hardesty 2012). In particular, two passive remote sensors-the multichannel microwave radiometer (MWR) and the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI)-were singled out as commercially available instruments that met many of the NRC requirements and could therefore act as thermodynamic profiling nodes of the proposed network. Because such a network requires a significant monetary investment, an understanding of the relative performance between the two instruments was needed.