Performance of Commercial Radiometers in Very Low Temperature and Pressure Environments Typical of Polar Regions and of the Stratosphere: A Laboratory Study

Abstract

Abstract Characterizing the performance of ground-based commercial radiometers in cold and/or low-pressure environments is critical for developing accurate flux measurements in the polar regions and in the upper troposphere and stratosphere. Commercially available broadband radiometers have a stated operational temperature range of, typically, −20° to +50°C. Within this range, their temperature dependencies of sensitivities change less than 1%. But for deployments on high-altitude platforms or in polar regions, which can be much colder than −20°C, information on temperature dependency of sensitivity is not always available. In this paper, the temperature dependencies of sensitivities of popular pyranometers and pyrgeometers manufactured by Kipp and Zonen were tested in a thermal-vacuum chamber. When their body temperature is lowered to −60°C, pyranometer sensitivity drops by 4%–6% from the factory-default specification. Pyrgeometer sensitivity increases by 13% from the factory-default specification during a similar temperature change. When the chamber pressure is lowered from 830 to 6 hPa, the sensitivity decreases by about 2% for the pyranometer, and increases by about 2% for the pyrgeometer. Note that these temperature and pressure dependencies of sensitivities are specific for the instruments that were tested and should not be applied to others. These findings show that for measurements suitable for climate studies, it is crucial to characterize temperature and/or pressure effects on radiometer sensitivity for deployments on high-altitude platforms and in polar regions.