METR Introduction to Synoptic Meteorology Other upper air sounding systems, apart from radiosondes University of Oklahoma 2004

ACARS  ACARS – Airline Communications Addressing and Reporting System  Automated weather reports from commercial aircraft  Aircraft-based observations that provide vertical profiles of wind, temperature and water vapor on ascent and descent

Remote sensing from the ground  Usually different systems for wind and temperature  Wind profilers (based on vertically-pointing radar and Doppler shift of return signal)  Doppler radar – wind measurements from radar  RASS – Radio Acoustic Sounding System (density variations affect the speed of sound)  Lidar – temperature measurements (density variations reflect light)

Remote sensing from space  Mainly temperature and moisture soundings using infrared and microwave signals  Both geostationary and polar orbiting satellites  Vertical resolution is much coarser than radiosondes  GPS soundings – temperature and water vapor profiles and total water vapor (density variations refract radio signals) System under development