Ground- and ship-based microwave radiometer measurements during EUREC4A

Abstract

Abstract. During the EUREC4A field study, microwave radiometric measurements were performed at Barbados Cloud Observatory (BCO) and aboard the RV Meteor and RV Maria S Merian. We present retrieved Integrated Water Vapor (IWV), Liquid Water Path (LWP) and temperature and humidity profiles as a unified, quality-controlled, multi-site dataset on a three second temporal resolution for a core period between January 19, 2020 and February 14, 2020 in which all instruments were operational. 14-channel K- and V-band measurements were performed at BCO and aboard the RV Meteor, and combined radar-radiometer measurements of a W-band Doppler radar with a single-channel radiometer instrument were conducted at 89 GHz onboard the RV Meteor and RV Maria S Merian. Mean IWV of 31.8 kgm−2 matches independent radiosoundings at BCO with a rootmean-square difference of 1.1 kgm−2. Mean LWP conditions in confident cloudy, non-precipitating conditions ranged between 66.5 gm−2 at BCO to 40.4 gm−2 aboard the RV Maria S Merian. Aboard the ships, 90 % of LWP was below 120 gm−2 with an uncertainty of 30 % at LWP of 50 gm−2. Up to 30 % of confident cloudy profiles ranged below the LWP detection limit due to optically thin clouds. The data set comprises of processed raw-data (Level 1), full quality-controlled post-processed instrument data (Level 2), a unified temporal resolution (Level 3), and a ready-to-use multi-site time series of IWV and LWP (Level 4), available to the public via AERIS (https://doi.org/10.25326/454, Schnitt et al., 2023). The data set complements the airborne LWP measurements conducted during EUREC4A and provides a benchmark tool for model-observation studies.