New Website to Ensure Data Continuity For Radiosounding Observations  

Vaisala (Finland) has established a public website that aims to ensure data continuity for the upper-air observations gathered with the company’s radiosounding equipment. The website was created to respond to the needs of the international climatological research community, who need to ensure that observation data remains comparable and representative of the actual real-life phenomena.

Soundings are a major resource for climatological research, and the observation data series can span decades. Maintaining data continuity within the time series is crucial, as researchers need to be able to adjust and correct any information that could have a misrepresentative effect on the long-term trends within the series.

Vaisala’s newly established website provides information on product modifications and further developments of the Vaisala Radiosonde RS92 product family and the related groud equipment, dating back to the launch of the products. The effect of product modifications on measurement results is small or non-existent, but documenting them guarantees that no change that could effect the interpretation of climatological time series is overlooked.

Going forward, similar data continuity information will be provided for the climate reference radiosonde that Vaisala is currently developing to serve the specific needs of climate change research.