An investigation of atmospheric temperature, humidity and cloud detection techniques over the Arctic marine cryosphere.

• Main Author: Candlish, Lauren
• Other Authors: Barber, David (Environment and Geography), Hanesiak, John (Environment and Geography) Bullock, Paul (Soil Science)
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Sea Ice; Clouds; Arctic; CloudSat; Calipso; Microwave Profiler; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/4489

The veracity of a Radiometric Microwave Profiling Radiometer (MWRP) while mounted onboard a ship in the Arctic marine environment was assessed. The MWRP was validated against radiosonde data by calculating the RMS and bias for simultaneous measurements taken for temperature and absolute humidity profiles. The vertical resolution of the MWRP was calculated using the inter-level covariance method. Based on the comparisons, the MWRP provided reliable measurements of both temperature and absolute humidity while mounted on the CCGS Amundsen. Satellites CloudSat and Calipso were assessed over the Arctic marine cryosphere. Temperature and absolute humidity from the ECMWF-aux data product was compared with profiles from the ship based MWRP. The cloud base heights measured by the ceilometer and MWRP were compared to CloudSat and Calipso's GeoProf-lidar. Due to a large number of possible false detections, the constraints used by the GeoProf-lidar data product for cloud detection may need to be further refined. May 2011