The Seoul Water Vapor Radiometer for the Middle Atmosphere: Calibration, Retrieval, and Validation

A new ground-based 22-GHz radiometer, designed to deliver middle atmospheric water vapor profiles over the mid-latitudinal Asian continent, was designed at the University of Bern, Switzerland. In this paper, we outline the calibration and retrieval concepts of the instrument, which has been in operation in Seoul (37.32° N, 126.57° E), Korea, since November 2006. In addition, a quality assessment of the delivered profiles is presented, through the validation with the data from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) onboard the Aura satellite. The differences between the Seoul Water Vapor Radiometer and Aura MLS are better than 2 % between 1 and 0.2 hPa, and they decline nearly linearly to -14.5 % between 0.2 and 0.01 hPa.