Articles | Volume 9, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-9-4759-2016
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-9-4759-2016
Research article
 | 
26 Sep 2016
Research article |  | 26 Sep 2016

A semiempirical error estimation technique for PWV derived from atmospheric radiosonde data

Julio A. Castro-Almazán, Gabriel Pérez-Jordán, and Casiana Muñoz-Tuñón

Data sets

Soundings at Güímar Spanish Agencia Estatal de Meteorología http://www.aemet.es

Sounding data at Lindenberg and Ny-Ålesund GCOS Reference Upper-Air Network http://www.dwd.de/EN/research/international_programme/ gruan/home.html

Low-resolution radiosounding data Dept. of Atmospheric Science at the University of Wyoming http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html

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Short summary
Water vapour is the main responsible for the atmospheric extinction in astronomical observations in different bands. One of the most common and accurate techniques to measure it are the radiosoundings. A method to estimate the error and the optimum number of sampled levels is proposed, considering the uncertainties and the leakage in sampling, based on data from Roque de los Muchachos Observ. and Guimar (Canary Is., Spain), Lindenberg (Germany) and Ny-Ålesund (Norway). The median error is 2.0  %.