Atmospheric Temperature Sounding

• Atmospheric Temperature
• Remote Sensing of Temperature
• Sounding
• Sounder

Atmospheric Temperature

The mean atmospheric vertical temperature profile is as following.

The temperature of atmosphere has many infomation of atmosphere. So there are many the instruments and satellites to determine atmospheric temperature.

Remote Sensing of Temperature

There are three types of temperature : kinetic temperature, radiationg(or brightness) temperature, antenna temperature. The kinetic temperature is the 'true' or internal temperature of a body. The radiating (or brightness) temperature is the apparent temperature of a body. It can be measurable by a remote sensing device such as radiometer etc. And the antenna temperature is the product of kinetic temperature and the power of radiometer antenna that is making the measurement.

Sounding

There are two types of sounding : passive sounding and active sounding. While the passive sounding which can measure the magnitude until now, the active sounding can measure the magnitude and direction and use of the lidar and radar. But the active sounding is just in the planning. Passive sounding includes the vertical sounding and the limb sounding. The vertical sounding is the sounding instrument senses radiation coming from the atmosphere and the earth's surface. And the limb sounding is that only the limb of the atmosphere is sensed. Both of them use the Schwarzchild's equation. In the case of the limb sounding, the weighting fuctions peak very sharply at the tangent height because the instrument senses nothing below the tangent height and atmospheric density decreases exponentially above the tangent height. While the background of the limb sounding is cold and uniform space, the background of the vertical sounding is hot and variable earth surface. And the limb sounding has the geometry limitation of the horizontal resolution of the soundings.

Sounder

1. GOES sounder

   This satellite can measure the atomospheric temperature of several level with longwave, midwave, shortwave. It has 18 thermal infrared bands and low-resolution band. The following figure is the land-sea temparature of GOES-8 sounder.

   

2. MOES technique

   This is the proposed instrument by selection of an appropriate set of CO2 lines. If it would be builded and used, it could measure the vertical temperature profile of stratosphere and this data set could be used with global warming studies, numerical weather predictions etc.

3. Do you want to see the real present profile of atmospheric temperature? "Click here"

If you have any comments or questions ; contact to Yuri,Mun