Assessment of adequate quality and collocation of reference measurements with space-borne hyperspectral infrared instruments to validate retrievals of temperature and water vapour

Abstract

A method is presented to assess whether a given reference ground-based point observation, typically a radiosonde measurement, is adequately collocated and sufficiently representative of space-borne hyperspectral infrared instrument measurements. Once this assessment is made, the ground-based data can be used to validate and potentially calibrate, with a high degree of accuracy, the hyperspectral retrievals of temperature and water vapour.