| 1. |
- Read, William G., et al.
(författare)
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The SPARC Water Vapor Assessment II: assessment of satellite measurements of upper tropospheric humidity
- 2022
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Ingår i: Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1867-1381 .- 1867-8548. ; 15:11, s. 3377-3400
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nineteen limb-viewing data sets (occultation, passive thermal, and UV scattering) and two nadir upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) data sets are intercompared and also compared to frost-point hygrometer balloon sondes. The upper troposphere considered here covers the pressure range from 300-100 hPa. UTH is a challenging measurement, because concentrations vary between 2-1000 ppmv (parts per million by volume), with sharp changes in vertical gradients near the tropopause. Cloudiness in this region also makes the measurement challenging. The atmospheric temperature is also highly variable ranging from 180-250 K. The assessment of satellite-measured UTH is based on coincident comparisons with balloon frost-point hygrometer sondes, multi-month mapped comparisons, zonal mean time series comparisons, and coincident satellite-to-satellite comparisons. While the satellite fields show similar features in maps and time series, quantitatively they can differ by a factor of 2 in concentration, with strong dependencies on the amount of UTH. Additionally, time-lag response-corrected Vaisala RS92 radiosondes are compared to satellites and the frost-point hygrometer measurements. In summary, most satellite data sets reviewed here show on average similar to 30 % agreement amongst themselves and frost-point data but with an additional similar to 30 % variability about the mean bias. The Vaisala RS92 sonde, even with a time-lag correction, shows poor behavior for pressures less than 200 hPa.
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| 2. |
- von Engeln, Axel, et al.
(författare)
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One-dimensional variational (1-D Var) retrieval of temperature, water vapor, and a reference pressure from radio occultation measurements : A sensitivity analysis
- 2003
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Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202. ; 108:11, s. 4337-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A 1-D Var retrieval study of simulated radio occultation measurements is presented. Temperature and a water vapor profile are retrieved along with a reference pressure to generate the pressure profile by applying the hydrostatic equation. High-resolution European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) atmospheric fields are used by a ray tracing tool to calculate the exact positions of the tangent point. The 1-D atmospheric profiles following the calculated tangent point trajectory in the 3-D ECMWF fields are used to simulate bending angle measurements with a 1-D forward model. Assimilation of these bending angles in a 1-D Var tool employing the same 1-D forward model is performed. We analyze the sensitivity of the retrieval to changes in vertical resolution, horizontal smearing of the tangent point trajectory, and the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium for a nonvertical atmospheric scan. We find that retrievals calculated without adequate vertical resolution can have significant errors in temperature and water vapor. Errors in the retrieval by assuming hydrostatic equilibrium for a nonvertical scan generally cause only minor errors in the retrieved profiles. A study into the occurrence of rays curving down toward the Earth surface indicates that about 5–10% of the profiles could experience so-called critical refraction at altitudes between 0.5 km and 2 km in case of the applied high-resolution ECMWF data.
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