Identification

Title

Comparison of global observations and trends of total precipitable water derived from microwave radiometers and COSMIC radio occultation from 2006 to 2013

Abstract

We compare atmospheric total precipitable water (TPW) derived from the SSM/I (Special Sensor Microwave Imager) and SSMIS (Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder) radiometers and WindSat to collocated TPW estimates derived from COSMIC (Constellation System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate) radio occultation (RO) under clear and cloudy conditions over the oceans from June 2006 to December 2013. Results show that the mean microwave (MW) radiometer - COSMIC TPW differences range from 0.06 to 0.18 mm for clear skies, from 0.79 to 0.96 mm for cloudy skies, from 0.46 to 0.49 mm for cloudy but non-precipitating conditions, and from 1.64 to 1.88 mm for precipitating conditions. Because RO measurements are not significantly affected by clouds and precipitation, the biases mainly result from MW retrieval uncertainties under cloudy and precipitating conditions. All COSMIC and MW radiometers detect a positive TPW trend over these 8 years. The trend using all COSMIC observations collocated with MW pixels for this data set is 1.79 mm decade(-1), with a 95% confidence interval of (0.96, 2.63), which is in close agreement with the trend estimated by the collocated MW observations (1.78 mm decade(-1) with a 95% confidence interval of 0.94, 2.62). The sample of MW and RO pairs used in this study is highly biased toward middle latitudes (40-60 degrees N and 40-65 degrees S), and thus these trends are not representative of global average trends. However, they are representative of the latitudes of extratropical storm tracks and the trend values are approximately 4 to 6 times the global average trends, which are approximately 0.3 mm decade(-1). In addition, the close agreement of these two trends from independent observations, which represent an increase in TPW in our data set of about 6.9 %, are a strong indication of the positive water vapor-temperature feedback on a warming planet in regions where precipitation from extratropical storms is already large.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7f47rr5

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

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geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

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date type

publication

effective date

2018-01-10T00:00:00Z

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Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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None

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contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2023-08-18T19:17:06.338156

Metadata language

eng; USA