Microwave Radiometer and Radiosonde Water Vapor Measurements for Nauru99
![[Radiometer & Sonde Plot, Nauru99]](http://www.atd.ucar.edu/sssf/projects/Nauru99/images/mwr_cf_sonde.gif)
Several systems were used to measure integrated water vapor from the R/V Mirai during the Nauru99 field campaign. NCAR operated a Radiometrics microwave radiometer and JAMSTEC launched Vaisala RS80 radiosondes. The plot above shows time series of integrated water vapor as measured by the radiometer (blue line) and by the sondes (red line); as can be seen, the two measurements agree very well. The one sample in which the sonde measurement was much higher, was on June 27 at the time of heavy rain seen in the MAPR observations of a squall page.
The radiometer was supplied by Radiometrics and was run in continuous tip calibration mode using software supplied by Jim Liljegren of the Ames Lab. The radiosonde analysis was carried out by Junhong Wang of NCAR. Junhong has a paper "Ground Check Corrections in Radiosonde Data during Nauru99 and for the ARM Southern Great Plains Site" that shows that for the sondes from the Mirai during Nauru99, it is better not to include ground check corrections in analysis of the sondes. This paper should appear shortly in the ARM Science Team Proceedings, 2000.