STAR Iqaluit Microwave Radiometer Data

The WVR-1100 Microwave Radiometer (MR) located at the Environment Canada Iqaluit Station was a dual frequency radiometer operating at 23.8 GHz and 31.4 GHz. This allowed simultaneous measurements of integrated water vapor and integrated liquid water in the scan path. The STAR MR had a sampling resolution of about 1-minute, with vertical profiles ranging up to 10 km in the atmosphere. The data was automatically stored in two types of files .los, .sav, .err and ND_calib.log. The .los data file contains line of sight information, including date and time, brightness temperatures, total integrated water vapor and liquid water, phase delay, opacities, and azimuth and elevation observations. The .sav data file contains all data collected by the instrument, including raw data files so that the user can post-process with different retrieval coefficients. The .err file contains the radiometer fault messages, if any, that occurred during the data collection period. The ND_calib.log is a log of the calibration results. The MR was only operational during the fall field campaign (10 Oct – 30 Nov 2007). During specific time periods, the MR stopped working and/or there were problems with the data files. There are some missing data as a result. No data is available between day 296 (23 Oct) and day 300 (27 Oct), intermittent data is available between 300 (27 Oct), and no data are available between day 316 (12 Nov) 14:30 and day 317 (13 Nov) because of a power outage. The purpose of the Microwave Radiometer measurements at Iqaluit was to provide: (1) Column- integrated water vapor and liquid water content data; (2) Validation/parameterization for the GEM, GEM-LAM models; and (3) Comparisons between STAR upper air radiosondes, and aircraft measurements for validation purposes.