RESEARCH ON THE UPPER TROPOSPHERE WATER VAPOR OVER EAST ASIA WITH THE GMS-5
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Water vapor is a key factor of the climate change. The water vapor in upper troposphere is more important to global radiative balance. Satellite remote sensing provides a useful way to retrieve the upper troposphere water vapor at the low temperature. One of the most widely used channels to retrieval the water vapor is the 6.7 μm channel.Soden (1993) suggested a scheme by using this channel to obtain upper troposphere relative humidity. In this paper, we apply this method to the water vapor channel data provided by the GMS-5, and get the distribution of the clear sky upper troposphere water vapor over East Asia. A month-average distribution is confirming by the relative humidity distribution given by the NCEP data. Based on the GMS-5 data of 1996-2002, we get an average distribution of the upper troposphere water vapor over East Asia. This product is an aid ant data set for the research on water cycle and the responding of the atmospheric water vapor to climate change.Variation (astronomy)
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Microwave Limb Sounder
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[1] The relative contributions of Southeast Asian convective source regions during boreal summer to water vapor in the tropical stratosphere are examined using Lagrangian trajectories. Convective sources are identified using global observations of infrared brightness temperature at high space and time resolution, and water vapor transport is simulated using advection-condensation. Trajectory simulations are driven by three different reanalysis data sets, GMAO MERRA, ERA-Interim, and NCEP/NCAR, to establish points of consistency and evaluate the sensitivity of the results to differences in the underlying meteorological fields. All ensembles indicate that Southeast Asia is a prominent boreal summer source of tropospheric air to the tropical stratosphere. Three convective source domains are identified within Southeast Asia: the Bay of Bengal and South Asian subcontinent (MON), the South China and Philippine Seas (SCS), and the Tibetan Plateau and South Slope of the Himalayas (TIB). Water vapor transport into the stratosphere from these three domains exhibits systematic differences that are related to differences in the bulk characteristics of transport. We find air emanating from SCS to be driest, from MON slightly moister, and from TIB moistest. Analysis of pathways shows that air detrained from convection over TIB is most likely to bypass the region of minimum absolute saturation mixing ratio over the equatorial western Pacific; however, the impact of this bypass mechanism on mean water vapor in the tropical stratosphere at 68 hPa is small (<0.1 ppmv). This result contrasts with previously published hypotheses, and it highlights the challenge of properly quantifying fluxes of atmospheric humidity.
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Total water was measured in the high troposphere and low stratosphere over Panama during ten aircraft flights. The results show that convective storms provide the means of transporting water into the stratosphere. From a consideration of the anvil heights over different areas of the tropical zone, it follows that a negative gradient of water vapor mixing ratio with altitude must exist over most of the lower stratosphere.
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Radiometrically inferred areal observations of the atmospheric water vapor burden have been made in the 270 to 520 cm −1 spectral band over western U. S. and the extreme eastern Pacific from the NASA C‐141 Kuiper Airborne Observatory. Before this very few observations from the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere over such a broad area have been made. 30600 individual observations from eight separate synoptic situations involving eight jet maxima were computer‐averaged over 2° latitude × 2° longitude boxes and related to the polar continental jet. Mean water vapor burdens ranged from 4.6×10 −4 g cm −2 to 14.3×10 −4 g cm −2 at 13.4 km with a striking peak just north of the jet wind maximum over a region of strong upward vertical motion.
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Abstract Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere although changes in carbon dioxide constitute the “control knob” for surface temperatures. While the latter fact is well recognized, resulting in extensive space‐borne and ground‐based measurement programs for carbon dioxide as detailed in the studies by Keeling et al. (1996), Kuze et al. (2009), and Liu et al. (2014), the need for an accurate characterization of the long‐term changes in upper tropospheric and lower stratospheric ( UTLS ) water vapor has not yet resulted in sufficiently extensive long‐term international measurement programs (although first steps have been taken). Here, we argue for the implementation of a long‐term balloon‐borne measurement program for UTLS water vapor covering the entire globe that will likely have to be sustained for hundreds of years.
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Water vapor in the upper troposphere has a significant impact on the climate system. Difficulties in making accurate global measurements have led to uncertainty in understanding water vapor's coupling to the hydrologic cycle in the lower troposphere and its role in radiative energy balance. The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) on the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is able to retrieve water vapor concentration in the upper troposphere with good sensitivity and nearly global coverage. An analysis of these preliminary retrievals based on 3 years of observations shows the water vapor distribution to be similar to that measured by other techniques and to model results. The primary MLS water vapor measurements were made in the stratosphere, where this species acts as a conserved tracer under certain conditions. As is the case for the upper troposphere, most of the stratospheric discussion focuses on the time evolution of the zonal mean and zonally varying water vapor. Stratospheric results span a 19‐month period and tropospheric results a 36‐month period, both beginning in October of 1991. Comparisons with stratospheric model calculations show general agreement, with some differences in the amplitude and phase of long‐term variations. At certain times and places, the evolution of water vapor distributions in the lower stratosphere suggests the presence of meridional transport.
Microwave Limb Sounder
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