new paper from group on the consistency between GRUAN sondes, LBLRTM and IASI

Radiosonde soundings from the GRUAN data record are shown to be consistent with IASI measured radiances via the LBLRTM radiative transfer model in the part of the spectrum that is mostly affected by water vapour absorption in the upper troposphere (from 700 hPa up). This result is key to have consistency between radiosonde and satellite measurements for climate data records, since GRUAN, IASI and LBLRTM constitute reference measurements in each of their fields. This is specially the case for night time radiosonde measurements. Although the sample size is small (16 cases), day time GRUAN radiosonde measurements seem to have a small dry bias of 2.5 % in absolute terms of relative humidity, located mainly in the upper troposphere, with respect to LBLRTM and IASI.

More details can be found in the AMTD paper: http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/amt-2016-344

[Figure to the right shows individual samples of a raw GRUAN sonde (green), ECMWF profile (blue) and the final profile after pre–processing before being fed as input to LBLRTM (red). The red, green and blue lines to the right show the temperature profiles, while the ones to the left show the hunmidity profiles represented as dew point temperature.]