Intercomparison of GPS radiosonde soundings during the eastern tropical Indian Ocean experiment

Temperature and relative humidity profiles derived from two China-made global positioning system (GPS) radiosondes (GPS-TK and CF-06-A) during the east tropical Indian Ocean (ETIO) experiment were compared with Vaisala RS92-SGP to assess the performances of China-made radiosondes over the tropical ocean. The results show that there have relative large biases in temperature observations between the GPSTK and the RS92-SGP in the low troposphere, with a warmbias of greater than 2 K in the day and a cooling bias of 0.6 K at night. The temperature differences of the CF-06-A were small in the troposphere both in daytime and nighttime, and became large peak-to-peak fluctuations in the stratosphere. The intercomparison of the relative humidity showed that the CF-06-A had large random errors due to the limitation of sensors and the lack of correction scheme, and the GPS-TK had large systematic biases in the low troposphere which might be related to the temperature impact. GPS height measurements are clearly suitable for China-made radiosonde systems operation. At night, the CF-06-A and the GPS-TK could provide virtual potential temperature and atmospheric boundary layer height measurements of suitable quality for both weather and climate research. As a result of the intercomparison experiment, major errors in the Chinamade radiosonde systems were well indentified and subsequently rectified to ensure improving accuracy for historical and future radiosondes.