Radiosonde Sensors Bias in Precipitable Water Vapor From Comparisons With Global Positioning System Measurements

Abstract

In this study, we compared the precipitable water vapor (PWV) data derived from the radiosonde observation data at Sokcho Observatory and the PWV data at Sokcho Global Positioning System (GPS) Observatory provided by Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, for the years of 2006, 2008, 2010, and analyzed the radiosonde seasonal, diurnal bias according to radiosonde sensor types. In the scatter diagram of the daytime and nighttime radiosonde PWV data and the GPS PWV data, dry bias was found in the daytime radiosonde observation as known in the previous study. Overall, the tendency that the wet bias of the radiosonde PWV increased as the GPS PWV decreased and the dry bias of the radiosonde PWV increased as the GPS PWV increased. The quantitative analysis of the bias and error of the radiosonde PWV data showed that the mean bias decreased in the nighttime except for 2006 winter, and in comparison for summer, RS92-SGP sensor showed the highest quality.