RASS, a Remote Sensing System for Measuring Low-Level Temperature Profiles

Abstract

A new technique for remote measurement of temperature in the lower atmosphere has been developed and successfully tested. The equipment used is called a Radio Acoustic Sounding System because a burst of sound propagating upward in the air is tracked by a Doppler radar. Air temperature at each height is determined from the instantaneous speed of the sound pulse and a complete profile can be obtained in only a few seconds. In order to improve accuracy, the measurements are normally averaged for several minutes, but even so the sampling rate is high enough to continuously monitor the temperature profile. Although earlier efforts showed that sound could indeed be tracked by radar, the work described here is the first successful attempt to use the technique to measure temperature profiles.