Influence and Compensation Method of the Radiosonde Temperature Sensor according to Solar Radiation Change

For the upper air observations, a temperature measurement using radiosonde is a common method, and the compensation of solar radiation effects in the radiosonde temperature sensor is an important factor. Most products compensate using software by calculating insolation in an angle of sunlight between the sun and radiosonde. However, unanticipated movement of radiosonde while the balloon rising may cause insolation differences and may cause errors in solar radiation compensation.

In this paper, we present various experiments and compensation methods of the radiosonde temperature sensor to overcome the errors caused by the movement of the radiosonde rotation, etc. The methods and procedures of this study are as follows.

First, use the solar simulator to analyze the temperature variation and solar effect of the temperature sensor in the radiosonde according to the insolation. It also analyzes the temperature variation and solar effect of the temperature sensor according to the incident angle between the solar simulator and radiosonde.

Second, similar to the first, we measure and analyze solar radiation absorbed by solar cells attached to radiosonde.

Third, we present combined compensate solution of the first and the second experiment results, to overcome errors caused by insolation effects in the radiosonde temperature sensors.

At last, we compared that the reference temperature in similar environment with the upper air conditions, to verify the new radiated compensation performance of the radiosonde temperature sensor. As the result of the new solar compensation technique in this study, the measurement between radiosonde temperature sensor and reference temperature is within ±0.3°C.
Hereafter, we will conduct a performance evaluation by rising actual radiosonde to the upper air, based on this study.