Update on the Consensus Reference Concept for Testing Radiosondes

The U. S. has been testing radiosonde manufacturer's radiosondes for many decades at test facilities around the country and has developed a number of test techniques for verifying performance. Recent advances in measuring the upper air atmosphere utilizing state-of-the-art referencing technologies and the development of new test techniques within the U.S. are now available for evaluating radiosonde performance to meet the more stringent climate monitoring requirements. Examples of these reference technologies include: NWS's Advanced Temperature Measuring system, Snow White, high-precision GPS measurements of height, the Integrated Precipitable Water sensor using GPS techniques, and ground-based surface instrumentation to measure clouds and weather. Each reference technology can play an important role in the Consensus Reference System; whereby, data are integrated into information data bases from which statistical techniques would be applied to the time-based and pressure/height candidate instrument measurements of say, pressure/heights, temperature, moisture variables, cloud bases, and winds as compared to the various references in use. This extended abstract will focus on recent developments with this concept using one or more of the different technologies and describe how a statistical technique can provide an objective method for assessing the performance of radiosondes in the future.