ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP Atmos. Chem. Phys. 1680-7324 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-6-4311-2006 Validation of remotely sensed profiles of atmospheric state variables: strategies and terminology von Clarmann T. 1 Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Institut für Meteorologie und Klimaforschung, Karlsruhe, Germany 25 09 2006 6 12 4311 4320 Copyright: © 2006 T. von Clarmann 2006 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ This article is available from https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/6/4311/2006/acp-6-4311-2006.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/6/4311/2006/acp-6-4311-2006.pdf

This paper summarizes and classifies the various approaches to validation of remote measurements of atmospheric state variables, and tries to recommend a clear and unambiguous terminology. The following approaches have been identified: Intercomparison of individual profiles for accuracy validation; statistical comparison of matched pairs of measurements with respect to bias determination and precision validation; statistical intercomparison of randomly sampled measurements by two instruments, and comparison of a single measurement to an ensemble of measurements. Applicable statistics are shortly reviewed, and recipes for evaluation of the co-incidence error due to less than perfect co-incidences are presented. An approach is suggested to quantitatively validate profile measurements when full covariance matrices are unavailable.

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