MeteoSchweiz - COST 720

Goals

The objectives of the COST 720 project (European Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) are to develop integrated ground-based remote-sensing stations for atmospheric profiling that are cost-effective; and to assess the use of these stations for meteorological analysis and forecast as well as climate research and climate modeling.
The program began in 2001 and will end in June 2006.

MeteoSwiss contribution
MeteoSwiss is actively contributing in this COST 720 action. We are participating to a Swiss COST 720 project on "Integrated remote sensing system for physical and chemical atmospheric parameters". The Swiss contribution includes the ETH Zurich (IACETH), the University of Bern (IAP), and MeteoSwiss (K/DA).

A major contribution of MeteoSwiss was the organization of the Temperature, Humidity, and Cloud profiling experiment (TUC) in Payerne in Autumn/Winter 2003/2004. During 13 weeks, various ground-based remote sensing systems were continuously operated at Payerne. The main goals of this campaign were to:

test ground-based temperature and humidity profiling systems,
study in particular their ability to detect planetary boundary layer phenomena like temperature inversion, presence of fog, fog dissipation, low clouds formation and evolution,
test cloud detection systems (passive and active ground-based systems),
provide a dataset for studying the possibility of system integration for improving temperature and humidity profiling with ground-based remote sensing systems.

Examples of recorded time series and of comparisons can be seen below. Data analysis is under progress and a series of reviewed papers is planned for beginning of 2006 (Special Issue in Meteorologische Zeitschrift)

Time series of profiles measured during COST720 TUC Experiment (26 December 2003: strong temperature inversion and stratus at about 1100 m asl with south-westerly flow above). Lower figures: microwave radiometer and temperature profiles (right), microwave radiometer and humidity profiles (left). Upper figure: wind profiler and wind speed (left) and wind direction (right) profiles.

Comparison between 2 radiometers and radio-soundings with clear sky conditions. Upper figures: overlay of radio-sounding (black), and 2 radiometers (red and blue). Lower figures: measured bias for the same cases as above.

COST 720

Integrated ground-based remote-sensing stations for atmospheric profiling.

Goals