The E-Profile temperature and humidity network: towards operational real-time thermodynamic profiling at the European scale

EUMETNET's observation Programme E-Profile processes and disseminates atmospheric vertical profiles of wind, aerosols and clouds in near real-time, focusing on operational meteorology. In the current phase of the Programme (2024-2028), E-Profile is expanding its profiling capabilities with the setup of a ground-based microwave radiometer (MWR) network dedicated to humidity and temperature profiling. The observations are mostly focusing on the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL), with the goal of achieving a high temporal resolution coupled with low data latency periods. The data are useful for fore- and nowcasting applications and offer a good complement to satellite observations in the context of data assimilation.  

E-Profile will provides three groups of data products, quasi continuously and with temporal resolution in the range of seconds or minutes: 1) calibrated brightness temperatures measured at different frequencies (mostly in the K- and V-band) and at different elevation angles; 2) liquid water path, water vapor, and temperature profiles retrieved from the brightness temperatures using  the TROPoe retrieval framework based upon optimal estimation; 3) atmospheric stability and Forecast Indices (FI), which can be of particular interest for forecasters, typically in rapidly evolving convective situations.  

E-Profile operates a pilot network of 20 instruments from 7 European countries and 3 different manufacturers and has started the near real-time data distribution of the quality controlled brightness temperatures (L1) since the start of 2026. Following the emergence of fast forward operators, these measurements can now directly be assimilated in NWP models. The retrievals of thermodynamic profiles are currently running in real-time on the European Weather Cloud and their validation is ongoing before the data can be distributed in real-time. For the validation study, we have selected three instruments from two different manufacturers located at two reference stations in Europe and performed extensive intercomparisons against radiosonde measurements during the year 2024 and 2025. In this contribution, we show the results of the validation and present the current state of the E-Profile MWR network, including the tools setup for real-time monitoring of data quality.