Satellite and VIZ–Radiosonde Intercomparisons for Diagnosis of Nonclimatic Influences

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Abstract
Radiosonde datasets of temperature often suffer from discontinuities due to changes in instrumentation, location, observing practices, and algorithms. To identify temporal discontinuities that affect the VIZ/Sippican family of radiosondes, the 1979–2004 time series of a composite of 31 VIZ stations are compared to composites of collocated values of layer temperatures from two microwave sounding unit datasets—the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). Discontinuities in the radiosonde time series relative to the two satellite datasets were detected with high significance and with similar magnitudes; however, some instances occurred where only one satellite dataset differed from the radiosondes. For the products known as lower troposphere (LT; surface–300 hPa) and midtroposphere (MT; surface–75-hPa layer), significant discontinuities relative to both satellite datasets were found—two cases for LT and four for MT. These are likely associated with changes in the r... Abstract Radiosonde datasets of temperature often suffer from discontinuities due to changes in instrumentation, location, observing practices, and algorithms. To identify temporal discontinuities that affect the VIZ/Sippican family of radiosondes, the 1979–2004 time series of a composite of 31 VIZ stations are compared to composites of collocated values of layer temperatures from two microwave sounding unit datasets—the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS). Discontinuities in the radiosonde time series relative to the two satellite datasets were detected with high significance and with similar magnitudes; however, some instances occurred where only one satellite dataset differed from the radiosondes. For the products known as lower troposphere (LT; surface–300 hPa) and midtroposphere (MT; surface–75-hPa layer), significant discontinuities relative to both satellite datasets were found—two cases for LT and four for MT. These are likely associated with changes in the r...