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A special screening procedure is developed for the removal of outliers in the GPS Zenith Total Delay (ZTD) data. ZTD data are converted to integrated water vapour (IWV) using surface pressure information from an AROME-WMED operational analysis. The reprocessed ZTD and IWV data are used to assess the accuracy of the near-real time E-GVAP ZTD data assimilated in operational numerical weather prediction systems and to validate the IWV data from the AROME-WMED operational analysis and AROME-WMED reanalysis 1, and from radiosonde observations. The mean differences between E-GVAP and reprocessed ZTD data are not negligible and lie in the range from −3 to +3 mm. The standard deviations of differences are between 4 and 8 mm. The comparisons of IWV from AROME-WMED analyses and the reprocessed GPS data show high quality of the analyses where operational GPS data are assimilated and lower quality where no GPS data are assimilated. Small but significant biases are found in the radiosonde data during daytime (−0.5 to +1.4 kg m −2 ), but their origin is not determined so far. Thanks to the high spatial density of the reprocessed GPS stations, both the large-scale and small-scale variations in IWV can be documented. The case of HyMeX Intensive Observing Period 8 is presented as an example of a heavy precipitation event. This work suggests that improved quality of the humidity fields can be expected of the future AROME-WMED reanalysis 2 as a result of the assimilation of the reprocessed GPS data.

Abstract. The Development of Methodologies for WaterVapour Measurement (DEMEVAP) project aims at assessing and improving humidity sounding techniques and establishing a reference system based on the combination of Raman lidars, ground-based sensors and GPS. Such a system may be used for climate monitoring, radiosonde bias detection and correction, satellite measurement calibration/validation, and mm-level geodetic positioning with Global Navigation Satellite Systems. A field experiment was conducted in September-October 2011 at Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP). Two Raman lidars (IGN mobile lidar and OHP NDACC lidar), a stellar spectrometer (SOPHIE), a differential absorption spectrometer (SAOZ), a sun photometer (AERONET), 5 GPS receivers and 4 types of radiosondes (Vaisala RS92, MODEM M2K2-DC and M10, and Meteolabor Snow White) participated in the campaign. A total of 26 balloons with multiple radiosondes were flown during 16 clear nights. This paper presents preliminary findings from the analysis of all these data sets. Several classical Raman lidar calibration methods are evaluated which use either Vaisala RS92 measurements, point capacitive humidity measurements, or GPS integrated water vapour (IWV) measurements. A novel method proposed by Bosser et al. (2010) is also tested. It consists in calibrating the lidar measurements during the GPS data processing. The methods achieve a repeatability of 4-5 %. Changes in the calibration factor of IGN Raman lidar are evidenced which are attributed to frequent optical re-alignments. When modelling and correcting the changes as a linear function of time, the precision of the calibration factors improves to 2-3 %. However, the variations in the calibration factor, and hence the absolute accuracy, between methods and types of reference data remain at the level of 7 %. The intercomparison of radiosonde measurements shows good agreement between RS92 and Snow White measurements up to 12 km. An overall dry bias is found in the measurements from both MODEM radiosondes. Investigation of situations with low RH values (< 10 %RH) in the lower and middle troposphere reveals, on occasion, a lower RH detection limit in the Snow White measurements compared to RS92 due to a saturation of the Peltier device. However, on other occasions, a dry bias is found in RS92, instead. On average, both RS92 and Snow White measurements show a slight moist bias at night-time compared to GPS IWV, while the MODEM measurements show a large dry bias. The IWV measurements from SOPHIE (night-time) and SAOZ (daytime) spectrometers, AERONET photometer (daytime) and calibrated Raman lidar (night-time) showed excellent agreement with the GPS IWV measurements.