Tropospheric water vapor from solar spectrometry and comparison with Jason microwave radiometer measurements

Atmospheric water vapor is a crucial factor in achieving highest accuracies in the field of space geodesy, particularly in the determination of height. A new instrumental approach to high‐precision determination of tropospheric water vapor has been investigated and realized in the construction of a mobile solar spectrometer. The optical approach as applied to the spectrometer allows the simultaneous measurement of single vibrational‐rotational absorption lines in the wide wavelength range between 728 nm and 915 nm. Dedicated field experiments have been carried out in the frame of an EU project for calibrating the Jason onboard microwave radiometer. A comparison of the spectrometer results with a conventional ground‐based water vapor radiometer and radiosondes revealed a fit on the order of 10 mm for the wet path delay, which corresponds to 1.6 kg/m2 integrated water vapor content (IWV). The comparison with the measurements from the radiometer of Jason reveals an even better agreement for the wet path delay. Long time series are foreseen for a detailed statistical analysis. The mobile solar spectrometer can be considered as a novel portable tool for determining tropospheric water vapor and as an excellent space‐borne radiometer calibration and validation system.