Radiometer Measurement Examples

High Precision Bounardy Layer Temperature Profiling

• Using only four opaque channels from 55 to 58 GHz
• Noise reduction to less than 0.1 K RMS
• Noise reduction by individual bandwidth per channel (in the saturated line center: 2GHz)
• Noise reduction by higher integration time (tolerable since all channels detected in parallel)
• Method depends also on small beam sidth to scan low (close to horizon, 5 degrees elevation)

Measurements close to Falkenberg (Germany) meteorological tower

Measurement concept: Elevation scanning with opaque channels which have limited reach (= penetration depth) into the atmosphere)

Time Series

The temperature of the meteorological tower is printed black, the radiometer temperatures red. The upper panel give the time series of the 10m temperature, the middle panel gives the 100m temperature.

The lower panel indicates the temperature gradient within 90m in the lowest atmosphere.

Humidity Profiling

Different vertical profiles of absolute humidity. Solid line: Radio sounding, dashed line: radiometer retrieval (all plots same scaling, 10 km height and 0 to 15 g/m³ absolute humidity).