Climatology as an Alternative to Standard Meteorology for Temperature

Author(s):

Brian P. Reen

Abstract:

Meteorological profiles referred to as standard meteorology are often used when better sources of meteorology (e.g., observations or numerical weather prediction forecasts) are not available. However, with easily obtainable information it may be possible to better estimate the vertical temperature profile than that provided by standard meteorology. Since surface temperature is easy to measure or even estimate, three profile estimation methodologies leveraging surface temperature are tested against numerical weather prediction profiles to evaluate their ability to estimate the temperature profile over one country. The method that performs best applies the climatological season-specific average temperature profile for that country for the surface temperature bin corresponding to the surface temperature. This technique improves over standard meteorology by 2.1 K when averaged over 0–40 km above ground level (AGL). Transitioning from height AGL to height above mean sea level climatological profiles well above the surface may provide minimal additional improvement for this country but will likely be more important for countries with higher average terrain heights. The addition of a surface pressure measurement may provide additional benefit by improving on the standard atmosphere estimates of pressure and density.