Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussions www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net 1867-8610 3 4 2010 10.5194/amtd-3-3293-2010 http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/3/3293/2010/ http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/3/3293/2010/amtd-3-3293-2010.html http://www.atmos-meas-tech-discuss.net/3/3293/2010/amtd-3-3293-2010.pdf 3293 3317 2010-08-06 Fast-response high-resolution temperature sonde aimed at contamination-free profile observations K. Shimizu shimizuk@ees.hokudai.ac.jp F. Hasebe Graduate School of Environmental Science, Hokkaido University, Kita 10 Nishi 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan Meisei Electric Co., Ltd., 2223 Naganuma-cho, Isesaki 372-8585, Japan Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Kita 10 Nishi 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan An innovative temperature sonde, equipped with an ultra thin tungsten wire, has been developed to meet the scientific requirements suitable for climate change research. The response time, shorter than 40 ms achieved at the altitude of 30 km, enables the temperature observations with the radiation correction of less than 0.4 K in the whole observation range. Test flights during the development stage reveal significant artificial perturbations in the observed temperature profiles. They are identified as the thermal contamination arising primarily from radiosonde package box with some additional effect from the launching balloon. The modification of the sensor mount successfully removed the contribution from the former effect. On the other hand, some filtering procedure need to be applied to remove the latter, although the use of a long suspension line will be effective to reduce the noise. There remain unavoidable small fluctuations (less than 0.4 K) that are brought about by the solid angle modulation of the illumination against the sensor body in the daytime. 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