Validation of Suomi-NPP CRIMSS retrievals of temperature and water vapor using ARM site best estimates of atmospheric state

CrIMSS is the Crosstrack Infrared and Microwave Sounding Suite, which is comprised of the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) and the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) instruments. This suite of instruments is onboard the Suomi-NPP satellite which was launched in October 2011. Given the high-accuracy retrieval goals of CrIMSS, validation is required at ground based sites which are well characterized. In this effort, radiosondes are launched coincident with the satellite overpasses of three Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites. These sites represent three different climatic regimes and include Lamont, Oklahoma in the US Southern Great Plains (SGP), Barrow, Alaska on the North Slope of Alaska (NSA), and Manus, Papa New Guinea in the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP). These radiosondes are used with additional observations to create a validation data set or best estimates of the atmospheric state at the overpass times. Comparisons of the resulting sonde profiles and the satellite retrievals, using the dual regression model, are made to determine the accuracy of the satellite products.