Remote sensing of boundary-layer temperature profiles by a scanning 5-mm microwave radiometer and RASS: a comparison experiment

Two techniques for deriving low-altitude temperature profiles were evaluated at an experiment conducted from November 1996 to January 1997 at the Boulder Atmospheric Observatory (BAO). The first used a scanning single wavelength 5-mm (60 GHz) microwave radiometer to measure vertical temperature profiles. The second was a Radio Acoustic Sounding System (RASS) that operated at 915 MHz. Typically, radiometric profiles were produced every 15 min; those from RASS were hourly. The BAO has an instrumented 300-m tower with 5-min measurements of temperature and relative humidity available at the surface and at altitudes of 10, 50, 100, 200, and 300 m. The tower measurements were occasionally supplemented with radiosonde releases and with hand-held meteorological measurements taken on the tower elevator. Data from this experiment are presented and plans for future deployments of these instruments are discussed. In addition, a new quality control algorithm for the RASS system is presented and evaluated.