Water vapor Upper Air Observations at MeteoSwiss Payerne

This paper will focus on the different water vapor upper air observations at MeteoSwiss Payerne by including the recent upgrades made on the Swiss operational radiosonde but in particular in the view of a performance analysis of the new Raman lidar in operation on site. The optical design and results from the lidar for day and nighttime measurements of tropospheric water vapor will be presented. The potential of this new system of observation will in particular be discussed with respect to: - The validation against co-located observations, in particular vs. the development of the new humidity sensor on the Swiss radiosonde, and the comparison with passive microwave water vapor profiling. -The new challenge for the numerical weather forecast model for which in particular wind fields in the 3rd dimension over the Swiss Plateau are already assimilated, but continuous real time water vapor and temperature vertical profiling not. This system will complement additional state of the art radiosonde techniques (eg. flash sonde, snow white) in accordance with the objectives of the WMO GCOS Reference Upper Air Network (GRUAN) in which MeteoSwiss Payerne is one of the reference sites.