The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program maintains instrumentation sites in 3 locations; a polar site (Barrow, Alaska), a mid latitude site (Lamont, Oklahoma) and a tropical western Pacific site (Nauru Island). These sites have an assortment of atmospheric observing instruments and launch radiosondes on a routine basis.

The Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed software to use ATOVS HIRS/3 and AMSU -A and -B data to retrieve vertical profiles of temperature and moisture. This software is available to the global community in the International ATOVS Processing Package (IAPP).

NOAA 15 and 16 overpass data for passes covering the three DOE ARM sites are being collected for validation studies. The study described here focuses on the validation of IAPP retrieval products. Data collected from ARM and the NOAA ATOVS over several months will be used to validate IAPP profile retrieval data.