Instrument training at RPG Radiometer Physics, Meckenheim, Germany

Heather Guy

Operating these instruments and interpreting the data requires specialist knowledge, and so the GAMB2LE team were invited to Meckenheim to visit the factory and receive training from the manufacturers prior to the instrument’s delivery. We came armed with questions and were rewarded by four long and intensive days of learning. We practised physically installing both instruments, learnt about the software operation, viewed the assembly lines in the factory, and filled notebooks with the theory and equations of microwave remote sensing.

Both instruments need calibrating with reference points of accurately known temperatures. For the cold temperature reference point, we use liquid nitrogen, that has a well characterised boiling point of -195.8°C. This means we need to understand how to handle liquid nitrogen to perform the instrument calibrations – a particularly exciting component of the training!

Understanding the complete measurement chain from the design and build of the physical hardware, to software and data collection limitations, to how the raw signals are converted to useful atmospheric variables, was especially rewarding. We now have a much fuller understanding of the capabilities, limitations, and uncertainties of the measurements from both instruments that we hope to propagate forward into our data products.

Hopefully we can still remember it all when the instruments arrive in December!