Validation of Tropospheric Water Vapor as Measured by the 183-GHz HAMSTRAD Radiometer Over the Pyrenees Mountains, France

• Published in: IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
• Main Authors: Ricaud, P., Gabard, Benjamin, Derrien, Solène, Attié, Jean-Luc, Rose, Thomas, Czekala, Harald
• Other Authors: Laboratoire d'aérologie (LAERO), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées (OMP), Météo France-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Météo France-Centre National d'Études Spatiales Toulouse (CNES)-Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD)-Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université Fédérale Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (Fraunhofer FIT), Fraunhofer (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft), RPG Radiometer Physics GmbH
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2010
• Subjects: [PHYS.PHYS.PHYS-AO-PH]Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]; Concordia Station; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00995287; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00995287/document; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00995287/file/Ricaud2010.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2009.2037920

International audience The H2O Antarctica Microwave Stratospheric and Tropospheric Radiometers (HAMSTRAD) 183-GHz radiometer has been developed to measure vertical profiles of tropospheric water vapor above Dome C (Concordia station), Antarctica ( 75?06'S, 123?21'E, 3233 m asml), which is an extremely cold and dry environment, over decades. Prior to its installation at Dome C in January 2009, the instrument was deployed at the Pic du Midi (PdM) station ( 42?56'N, 0?08'E, 2877 m asml) in the Pyrenees Mountains, France, over the period covering February-June 2008. Vertical profiles of absolute humidity and integrated water vapor (IWV) as measured by HAMSTRAD were compared with measurements from radiosondes launched in three different sites: Lannemezan (43?07'N, 0?23'E, 610 m asml), France (~30 km northeast from PdM), Bordeaux-Me?rignac Airport (44?49'N, 0?42'W, 50 m asml), France ( ~ 220 km northwest from PdM), and Zaragoza (41?39'N, 0?53'W, 263 m asml), Spain ( ~170 km southwest from PdM). The validation process also used the vertical profiles of tropospheric H2O as measured by the nadir-viewing infrared atmospheric sounding interferometer (IASI) instrument aboard the MetOp-A space platform. The temporal evolution of the HAMSTRAD H2O measurements above the PdM station is very consistent with IASI, sonde, and in situ measurements, tracking the same atmosphere from a dry period in February to a wet period in June. HAMSTRAD showed unrealistic values in periods of well-established snow tempest. While the sensitivity of the HAMSTRAD measurements tends to be degraded 6 km above the altitude of the instrument, namely, above 8877 m asml, the HAMSTRAD measurements seem reasonable at the uppermost retrieval level (namely, 10 km, 12 877 m asml). In May, the wet periods are systematically showing a good agreement between sonde and HAMSTRAD IWV fields and H2O below 6777 m asml but a dry bias of IASI by more than 4-kg m-2 IWV, where- - as outside of these periods, the three data sets behave consistently. Since the best ...