Muopause sounder to derive vertically averaged atmospheric temperature underneath the muopause with the distance of flight muography technique.

A number of papers have focused on monitoring surface temperature to evaluate the greenhouse effect. However, it is well known that measuring the net radiation from the entire troposphere using vertically averaged temperature would be preferable as an index to evaluate the greenhouse effect. Thus far, upper-air weather balloon systems, satellite-mounted hyperspectral infrared sounders, and microwave sounders have been used for acquiring vertically averaged tropospheric temperature. It would be advantageous to have another independent method to derive variations in vertically averaged tropospheric temperature (separate from balloon, infrared/microwave sounder measurements) to diversify the options that allow researchers to compare tropospheric temperature datasets with more variety. This paper presents the first demonstration result from a muopause sounder prototype that applies the distance of flight muography technique to measure the vertically averaged tropospheric temperature (surface = 70 hPa). The resultant relative temperature gauging accuracies of the muopause sounder prototype were respectively 1.2 K and 0.2 K for daily-averaged and monthly-averaged data. These muopause sounder's accuracies were evaluated by comparing with measurement data acquired from a reference weather balloon station. Muopause sounders can be cheaply produced and installed into drifting buoys. The concept and design of a future large-scale muopause sounder array, suitable for enhancing spatial coverage of measurements to the global scale, is proposed.