Temperature Filtering above 10 hPa in Heavy Rigging

  • ​The movement of a radiosonde suspended under a test flight rig used in various sounding test campaigns is not the same as that experienced by an individual radiosonde in flight (rigged directly to a balloon)
  • The slower movement can cause excess temperature reading fluctuation, ie. the temperature sensor gets warmer than the ambient air for short periods of time. This is observed only at very high altitudes
  • The same phenomenon takes place with ozone soundings, since the ozone sounding set-up is much heavier than the normal RS92 radiosonde
  • The software used for filtering the raw observations into the reported values was modified to take into account the requirements for slow movement in ozone soundings and in rig test arrangements  
  • For further information, please refer to the Final Report of the WMO Intercomparison of High Quality Radiosonde Systems in Mauritius, 2005