Date of Award
12-1995
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Department of Engineering Physics
First Advisor
Demill T. Goldizen, PhD
Abstract
The Millimeter-wave Atmospheric Sounder (MAS) is a high resolution limb- scanning microwave radiometer-spectrometer which has been flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The instrument was designed to sense the microwave emission from several upper atmospheric constituents, including water vapor and ozone. The resonant frequencies of water vapor and ozone are extremely close (183 and 184 GHz, respectively), so that the high-frequency wing of the water vapor spectrum overlaps the low frequency wing of the ozone spectrum. Consequently, the measured ozone spectrum incorporates a slight water vapor contribution; therefore, the retrieved ozone profile is dependent on the true water vapor profile. The MAS operational retrieval algorithm uses the ozone measurement spectrum to retrieve the height dependent vertical ozone concentration profile, but requires a water vapor profile in order to remove the influence of the water vapor spectrum from the ozone spectrum. Currently, the MAS Science Team provides the retrieved water vapor profile as the input to the ozone retrieval algorithm. Our simulation study investigates if this technique results in a smaller error than one in which a single, fixed climatological-mean water vapor profile is employed for all the ozone retrievals.
AFIT Designator
AFIT-GAP-ENP-95D-10
DTIC Accession Number
ADA302958
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Larry L., "A Comparison of Methods for Estimating RMS Error: A `Brute Force" Approach Versus a Mathematically-Elegant Approach, as Applied to the Calculation of a Specific Retrieval Error for a Limb-Scanning Microwave Radiometer-Spectrometer" (1995). Theses and Dissertations. 6133.
https://scholar.afit.edu/etd/6133