Publication of the Paper “Column Integrated Water Vapor and Aerosol Load Characterization with the New ZEN-R52 Radiometer”
Figure 1. ZEN-R52 picture.
The scientific paper “Column Integrated Water Vapor and Aerosol Load Characterization with the New ZEN-R52 Radiometer” has been published in Remote Sensing Journal on April 30, 2020, showing the first results of the column-integrated precipitable water vapor (PWV) and the aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieved by the new ZEN-R52 radiometer (Figure 1) in the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) high mountain station (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain), over a 10-month period (August 2017 to June 2018). This new radiometer has been specifically designed to monitor aerosols and atmospheric water vapor with a high degree of autonomy and robustness. Among the improvements of the new ZEN-R52 device in relation to previous versions stands out the smaller field of view, the increased signal-to-noise ratio, better stray light rejection, and an additional channel at 940 nm for PWV retrieval. ZEN-R52 Zenith Sky Radiance (ZSR) measurements and a lookup table (LUT) methodology are used to retrieve PWV and AOD. A comparison analysis with AERONET shown a ZEN-R52 AOD uncertainty of ±0.01 ± 0.13*AOD. Regarding the PWV, a comprehensive validation analysis involved AERONET and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrometer measurements as reference (Figure 2). This study found a good agreement between the instruments (ZEN-R52 PWV uncertainty of ±0.089 cm or ±0.036 + 0.061*PWV for PWV <1 cm).
Figure 2. PWV scatterplots between ZEN-R52, CE318-AERONET, CE318-IARC and FTIR at Izaña over a 10-month period (August 2017 to June 2018 a–f). The red line shows the linear fit equation, the broken grey line shows the diagonal and the colour bar indicates the density of data.
The general conclusion that can be extracted from this paper is that the ZEN-R52 might play an important role to expand aerosol and water vapor monitoring from ground-based instrumentation in desert areas. This increased representativeness of ground measurements can be critical for constraining global and relatively coarse-resolution models and also for improving satellite validation and aerosol model evaluation/assimilation in remote areas.
The full reference is: Almansa, A.F.; Cuevas, E.; Barreto, Á.; Torres, B.; García, O.E.; Delia García, R.; Velasco-Merino, C.; Cachorro, V.E.; Berjón, A.; Mallorquín, M.; López, C.; Ramos, R.; Guirado-Fuentes, C.; Negrillo, R.; de Frutos, Á.M. Column Integrated Water Vapor and Aerosol Load Characterization with the New ZEN-R52 Radiometer. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 1424. Accesible at https://www.mdpi.com/705210.
