Open AccessTest results from a Mobile Profiler System
Author(s) -
Cogan J
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
meteorological applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 1469-8080
pISSN - 1350-4827
DOI - 10.1002/met.5060020201
Subject(s) - radiosonde , wind profiler , depth sounding , meteorology , environmental science , microwave radiometer , remote sensing , dew point , satellite , atmospheric sounding , wind speed , radar , computer science , radiometer , geology , telecommunications , geography , oceanography , aerospace engineering , engineering
A Mobile Profiler System is being developed to provide operational users with atmospheric soundings in near to real time. The reduction of refresh time from the 2 to 12 hours of traditional rawinsonde systems to as short as 3 to 5 minutes should considerably reduce errors caused by time staleness. The mobile profiler combines a small satellite receiver and processor with ground‐based remote‐sensing systems and a portable meteorological ground station. Ground‐based systems include a 924 MHz radar wind profiler, a radio acoustic sounding system for virtual temperature, and a multi‐channel microwave radiometer for virtual temperature and total water vapour and liquid water content. Satellite soundings contain temperature, dew point and the derived variables of wind speed and direction. This paper describes the mobile profiler, provides a very brief outline of the combined sounding technique and presents some results from field tests. Comparisons with rawinsonde soundings nearly coincident in space and time provide an indication of the accuracy of the system. For the merged soundings, average standard deviations and means for virtual temperature were about 1.5 to 2.0 K and ±0.5 K, respectively. Preliminary results for wind speed suggested values consistent with those reported in the literature, but were inconclusive for wind direction.