Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussions www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net 1867-8610 2 4 2009 10.5194/amtd-2-1625-2009 http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/2/1625/2009/ http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/2/1625/2009/amtd-2-1625-2009.html http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/2/1625/2009/amtd-2-1625-2009.pdf 1625 1662 2009-07-13 Quality assessment of Izaña's upper-air water vapour measurement techniques: FTIR, Cimel, MFRSR, GPS, and Vaisala RS92 M. Schneider matthias.schneider@imk.fzk.de P. M. Romero F. Hase T. Blumenstock E. Cuevas R. Ramos IMK-ASF, Forschungszentrum und Universität Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany Centro de Investigación Atmosférica de Izaña, Agencia Estatal de Meteorología, Spain At the Izaña Atmospheric Research Centre water vapour amounts are measured routinely by different techniques since many years. We intercompare the total precipitable water vapour amounts measured between 2005 and 2009 by a Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, a Multifilter rotating shadow-band radiometer (MFRSR), a Cimel sunphotometer, a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, and daily radiosondes (Vaisala RS92). In addition we intercompare the water vapor profiles measured by the FTIR and the radiosondes. The long-term intercomparison assures that our study well represents the large water vapour variabilities that occur in the troposphere and allows a reliable empirical quality assessment for the different water vapour dataset. We examine how the data quality of the different techniques depends on atmospheric conditions and estimate the dry bias of the techniques which are restricted to clear sky observations. 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