WMO Joint Meeting of the CIMO Expert Team on Upper-air Systems Intercomparisons and International Organizing Committee on Upper-air Systems Intercomparisons

This meeting was held was held on 18-20 March 2004 in Geneva.

HMEI was represented by:
§ Joe Parini from InterMet
§   Rémy Pepin from Modem
§   Hannu Jauhianinen from Vaisala
§   Paul Ruppert from Meteolabor
§ Shinichi Tsuda from Meisei
§ Florian Schmidmer from Graw 
§ Tom Curran from Sippican 

The Executive Secretary, Bruce Sumner and the HMEI Administrator also attended. At the request of the experts attending the meeting, the Executive Secretary gave an HMEI slide presentation to the meeting.

Amongst the presentations at the meeting, were those on recent national tests/comparisons. Several of the HMEI manufacturers present had participated in these comparisons.

A report was also given of the progress of InterMet's universal upper-air system, which will be installed in the newly activated GUAN station in Dar Es Salaam. The UK Met Office has the contract to plan an operational demonstration of this system in situ in Dar Es Salaam, with evaluation of measurement error characteristics to be performed in parallel with operations. There will  be a test report prepared for the WWW department and the GCOS secretariat. 

It was also reported the the India Met. Department have installed 10 of their "flexible" upper-air IMS 1500 systems, which currently use the Indian IMD MK-IV radiosondes. However their system, being "flexible", is also able to use various radiosondes. So they will also be using the Sippican Mark IIA radiosonde with their system. Tests are ongoing with the Indian system and feedback will be provided to the ET on UGRN and the ET on UASI.

The chairman in his opening report had noted that the meeting agreed that it was important that benefits be seen to be delivered to the HMEI, so that WMO liaison between manufacturers can be seen to work to mutual benefit.

The Intercomparison, as summarized below, was discussed and organized, with positive interaction and agreement between HMEI manufacturers and the other expert team members.

§ INTERCOMPARISONS IN MAURITIUS - 2005

The meeting resulted in the organization of a WMO Intercomparison of major importance, which will have a considerable number of Radiosondes from seven HMEI manufacturers. These are  Graw, InterMet, Meteolabor, Meisei, Modem, Sippican, Vaisala. Radiosondes from NASA will also take part in the Intercomparison.

This WMO Intercomparison will be held in Mauritius in February 2005, and is expected to be of a three week duration. It will be an Intercomparison of High Quality Radiosonde Systems with a priority given to improved temperature and relative humidity measurements since the the last WMO Intercomparison.

Due to the large number of radiosonde flights, there will be two groups of sondes flown. The NASA ATM sonde will be flown in both groups to provide a crossover reference between the two groups.

A summary of the data resulting from the comparison will be ready for presentation by the Chairman of the IOC/ET to TECO 2005. All final data from the comparison will be provided to manufacturers by the Chairman of IOC/ET in October 2005 as part of the preparation for the November 2005 IOC/ET Initial data results review meeting.

Please see the final report (in pdf) for full details of the meeting.