Niklaus Kämpfer

Evaluation of the Applicability of Solar and Lamp Radiometric Calibrations of a Precision Sun Photometer Operating Between 300 and 1025 nm

Over a period of 3 years a precision Sun photometer (SPM) operating between 300 and 1025 nm was calibrated four times at three different high-mountain sites in Switzerland, Germany, and the United States by means of the Langley-plot technique. We found that for atmospheric window wavelengths the total error (2varsigma-statistical plus systematic errors) of the calibration constants V(0) (lambda), the SPM voltage in the absence of any attenuating atmosphere, can be kept below 1.6% in the UV-A and blue, 0.9% in the mid-visible, and 0.6% in the near-infrared spectral region. For SPM channels within strong water-vapor or ozone absorption bands a modified Langley-plot technique was used to determine V(0) (lambda) with a lower accuracy. Within the same period of time, we calibrated the SPM five times using irradiance standard lamps in the optical labs of the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos and World Radiation Center, Switzerland, and of the Remote Sensing Group of the Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. The lab calibration method requires knowledge of the extraterrestrial spectral irradiance. When we refer the standard lamp results to the World Radiation Center extraterrestrial solar irradiance spectrum, they agree with the Langley results within 2% at 6 of 13 SPM wavelengths. The largest disagreement (4.4%) is found for the channel centered at 610 nm. The results of these intercomparisons change significantly when the lamp results are referred to two different extraterrestrial solar irradiance spectra that have become recently available.

The 1994 northern midlatitude budget of stratospheric chlorine derived from ATMOS/ATLAS‐3 observations

Volume mixing ratio (VMR) profiles of the chlorine-bearing gases HCl, ClONO2, CCl3F, CCl2F2, CHClF2, CCl4, and CH3Cl have been measured between 3 and 49° northern- and 65 to 72° southern latitudes with the Atmospheric Trace MOlecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) instrument during the ATmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS)-3 shuttle mission of 3 to 12 November 1994. A subset of these profiles obtained between 20 and 49°N at sunset, combined with ClO profiles measured by the Millimeter-wave Atmospheric Sounder (MAS) also from aboard ATLAS-3, measurements by balloon for HOCl, CH3CCl3 and C2Cl3F3, and model calculations for COClF indicates that the mean burden of chlorine, ClTOT, was equal to (3.53±0.10) ppbv (parts per billion by volume), 1-sigma, throughout the stratosphere at the time of the ATLAS 3 mission. This is some 37% larger than the mean 2.58 ppbv value measured by ATMOS within the same latitude zone during the Spacelab 3 flight of 29 April to 6 May 1985, consitent with an exponential growth rate of the chlorine loading in the stratosphere equal to 3.3%/yr or a linear increase of 0.10 ppbv/yr over the Spring-1985 to Fall-1994 time period. These findings are in agreement with both the burden and increase of the main anthropogenic Cl-bearing source gases at the surface during the 1980s, confirming that the stratospheric chlorine loading is primarily of anthropogenic origin.

Ozone and temperature trends in the upper stratosphere at five stations of the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change

Upper stratospheric ozone anomalies from the satellite-borne Solar Backscatter Ultra-Violet (SBUV), Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment II (SAGE II), Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE), Global Ozone Monitoring by Occultation of Stars (GOMOS), and Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) instruments agree within 5% or better with ground-based data from lidars and microwave radiometers at five stations of the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC), from 45°S to 48°N. From 1979 until the late 1990s, all available data show a clear decline of ozone near 40 km, by 10%–15%. This decline has not continued in the last 10 years. At some sites, ozone at 40 km appears to have increased since 2000, consistent with the beginning decline of stratospheric chlorine. The phaseout of chlorofluorocarbons after the International Montreal Protocol in 1987 has been successful, and is now showing positive effects on ozone in the upper stratosphere. Temperature anomalies near 40 km altitude from European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast reanalyses (ERA-40), from National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) operational analyses, and from HALOE and lidar measurements show good consistency at the five stations, within about 3 K. Since about 1985, upper stratospheric temperatures have been fluctuating around a constant level at all five NDACC stations. This non-decline of upper stratospheric temperatures is a significant change from the more or less linear cooling of the upper stratosphere up until the mid-1990s, reported in previous trend assessments. It is also at odds with the almost linear 1 K per decade cooling simulated over the entire 1979–2010 period by chemistry–climate models (CCMs). The same CCM simulations, however, track the historical ozone anomalies quite well, including the change of ozone tendency in the late 1990s.

Stratospheric chlorine partitioning: Constraints from shuttle‐borne measurements of [HCl], [ClNO3], and [ClO]

Measured stratospheric mixing ratios of HCl, ClNO3, and ClO from ATMOS and MAS are poorly reproduced by models using recommended kinetic parameters. This discrepancy is not resolved by new rates for the reactions Cl+CH4 and OH+HCl derived from weighted fits to laboratory measurements. A deficit in modeled [HCl] and corresponding overprediction of [ClNO3] and [ClO], which increases with altitude, suggests that production of HCl between 20 and 50 km is much faster than predicted from recommended rates.

Retrieval of optical depth and particle size distribution of tropospheric and stratospheric aerosols by means of Sun photometry

Aerosol optical depth measurements by means of ground-based Sun photometry were made in Bern, Switzerland during two and a half years primarily to provide quantitative corrections for atmospheric effects in remotely sensed data in the visible and near-infrared spectral region. An investigation of the spatial variability of tropospheric aerosol was accomplished in the summer of 1994 in the Swiss Central Plain, a region often covered by a thick aerosol layer. Intercomparisons are made with two Sun photometers operated by the Swiss Meteorological Institute in Payerne (Swiss Central Plain) and Davos (Swiss Alps, 1590 m a.s.l.). By means of an inversion technique, columnar particle size distributions were derived from the aerosol optical depth spectra. Effective radius, columnar surface area, and columnar mass were computed from the inversion results. Most of the spectra measured in Bern exhibit an Angstrom-law dependence. Consequently, the inverted size distributions are very close to power-law distributions. Data collected during a four month calibration campaign in fall 1993 at a high-mountain station in the Swiss Alps (Jungfraujoch, 3580 m) allowed the authors to study optical properties of stratospheric aerosol. The extinction spectra measured have shown to be still strongly influenced by remaining aerosol of the June 1991 volcanic eruptions of Mount Pinatubo. Inverted particle size distributions can be characterized by a broad monodisperse peak with a mode radius around 0.25 /spl mu/m. Both aerosol optical depths and effective radii had not yet returned to pre-eruption values. Comparison of retrieved aerosol optical depth, columnar surface area and mass, with the values derived from lidar observations performed in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Southern-Germany, yielded good agreement.

A new 22-GHz radiometer for middle atmospheric water vapor profile measurements

We report on the Middle Atmospheric Water Vapor Radiometer (MIAWARA) instrument, a new ground-based 22-GHz-radiometer that provides water vapor profiles with an altitude coverage of 22-80 km. This paper focuses on the instrumentation and calibration of the new instrument. It is a noncooled instrument with a very low receiver noise temperature, even lower than receiver noise temperatures of existing cooled instruments. The calibration of MIAWARA is achieved with so-called tipping-curve and balanced calibration schemes. The combination of these two calibration techniques allows us to set up a different calibration scheme than most of the other, rarely existing, water vapor profile radiometers at 22 GHz without the commonly used liquid nitrogen calibration. With the use of tipping-curve calibrations, the instrument operates as a standalone instrument. This independence of liquid-nitrogen-cooled calibration targets and of other instruments makes MIAWARA a suitable instrument for campaign use. In addition to the instrumental and calibrational description, a validation technique for the tipping-curve calibration is presented. Finally, first results obtained by measurements carried out in the Swiss plateau are reported.

Modeled and empirical approaches for retrieving columnar water vapor from solar transmittance measurements in the 0.72, 0.82, and 0.94 μm absorption bands

A Sun photometer (18 channels between 300 and 1024 nm) has been used for measuring the columnar content of atmospheric water vapor (CWV) by solar transmittance measurements in absorption bands with channels centered at 719, 817, and 946 nm. The observable is the band-weighted transmittance function defined by the spectral absorption of water vapor and the spectral features of solar irradiance and system response. The transmittance function is approximated by a three-parameter model. Its parameters are determined from MODTRAN and LBLRTM simulations or empirical approaches using CWV data of a dual-channel microwave radiometer (MWR) or a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS). Data acquired over a 2-year period during 1996-1998 at two different sites in Switzerland, Bern (560 m above sea level (asl)) and Jungfraujoch (3580 m asl) were compared to MWR, radiosonde (RS), and FTS retrievals. At the low-altitude station with an average CWV amount of 15 mm the LBLRTM approach (based on recently corrected line intensities) leads to negligible biases at 719 and 946 nm if compared to an average of MWR, RS, and GPS retrievals. However, at 817 nm an overestimate of 2.7 to 4.3 mm (18-29%) remains. At the high-altitude station with an average CWV amount of 1.4 mm the LBLRTM approaches overestimate the CWV by 1.0, 1.4. and 0.1 mm (58, 76, and 3%) at 719, 817, and 946 nm, compared to the ITS instrument. At the low-altitude station, CWV estimates, based on empirical approaches, agree with the MWR within 0.4 mm (2.5% of the mean); at the high-altitude site with a factor of 10 less water vapor the agreement of the sun photometers (SPM) with the ITS is 0.0 to 0.2 mm (1 to 9% of the mean CWV there). Sensitivity analyses show that for the conditions met at the two stations with CWV ranging from 0.2 to 30 mm, the retrieval errors are smallest if the 946 nm channel is used.

The Millimeter Wave Atmospheric Sounder (MAS): a shuttle-based remote sensing experiment

The Millimeter Wave Atmospheric Sounder (MAS) will be launched in the spring of 1992 as part of the ATLAS 1 (Atmospheric Laboratory for Application and Science) mission. Using passive limb-scanning millimeter-wave radiometry, it will sense the thermal emission produced by ozone at 184 GHz, water vapor at 183 GHz, chlorine monoxide at 204 GHz, and oxygen (for retrieval of temperature and pressure) at 60 GHz. From these observations, concentration profiles of these gases throughout the middle atmosphere will be made. The fundamentals of the measurements, the design of the radiometers, and the approaches used for the data analysis are described. >

Comparison of co-located independent ground-based middle atmospheric wind and temperature measurements with numerical weather prediction models

High-resolution, ground-based and independent observations including co-located wind radiometer, lidar stations, and infrasound instruments are used to evaluate the accuracy of general circulation models and data constrained assimilation systems in the middle atmosphere at northern hemisphere mid-latitudes. Systematic comparisons between observations, the Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses including the recent Integrated Forecast System (IFS) cycles 38r1 and 38r2, the NASAs Modern Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) re-analyses and the free running climate Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM-LR) are carried out in both temporal and spectral domains. We find that ECMWF and MERRA are broadly consistent with lidar and wind radiometer measurements up to ~40 km. For both temperature and horizontal wind components, deviations increase with altitude as the assimilated observations become sparser. Between 40 and 60 km altitude, the standard deviation of the mean difference exceeds 5 K for the temperature and 20 m/s for the zonal wind. The largest deviations are observed in winter when the variability from large-scale planetary waves dominates. Between lidar data and MPI-ESM-LR, there is an overall agreement in spectral amplitude down to 15-20 days. At shorter time-scales, the variability is lacking in the model by ~10 dB. Infrasound observations indicate a general good agreement with ECWMF wind and temperature products. As such, this study demonstrates the potential of the infrastructure of the Atmospheric Dynamics Research Infrastructure in Europe project (ARISE) that integrates various measurements and provides a quantitative understanding of stratosphere-troposphere dynamical coupling for numerical weather prediction applications.

Weighted mean tropospheric temperature and transmittance determination at millimeter‐wave frequencies for ground‐based applications

A simple model for the radiometric determination of tropospheric transmittance is based on an isothermal troposphere. In this model the key parameter is the weighted mean tropospheric temperature Tm, which characterizes the radiation and temperature properties of the troposphere. Statistical approaches in modeling this parameter are presented here by using ground temperature, ground relative humidity, and radiometer data. In order to determine the statistical coefficients for Tm modeling and the parameters used in the transmittance retrieval algorithm, radiosonde data were used in a millimeter-wave propagation model for a site in the Swiss central plane and an Alpine site. Various observing geometries at different millimeter-wave frequencies were considered. A determination of Tm from ground temperature was achieved with a rms error between 4–5 K for the low-altitude site and 3–4 K for the high-altitude site. By incorporating relative humidity or radiometer data, an improvement of up to 25% relative to these values results, depending on frequency and site. The zenith transmittance estimations for the low-altitude site with our best model have a rms error of 0.5% at 38 GHz, 1% at 94, 110, and 142 GHz, 1.5% at 115 GHz, 2% at 204 GHz, and 3.5% at 279 GHz, whereas for the high-altitude site all rms errors are below 1%. The inclusion of radiometric information at 20 and 31 GHz did not provide any additional improvement, which was confirmed by actual measurements at 142 GHz.