Identification

Title

Water vapor estimates using simultaneous dual-wavelength radar observations

Abstract

A technique for the estimation of humidity in the lower troposphere using simultaneous dual-wavelength radar observations is proposed and tested. The method compares the reflectivity from clouds and precipitation of a non-attenuated wavelength (S-band, 10 cm) and an attenuated wavelength (Ka-band, 8 mm) to compute the clear-air gaseous attenuation at the attenuated wavelength. These estimates are of total gaseous attenuation on radar ray segments that extend from the radar to a cloud/precipitation echo or from one echo to another. The attenuation estimates are then used to compute the path-integrated humidity, which is plotted at the midpoint of the ray segments. Using estimates at several elevation angles and different ranges, a profile of humidity through the lower troposphere can be retrieved. The retrieved humidity compared favorably to proximity in situ soundings with root mean square difference values between the retrieval and sounding ranging from 0.14 to 0.85 g m−3 (approximately 2–6% relative error, respectively).

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7j104rz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

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

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2010-09-04T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 2010 American Geophysical Union.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

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

2025-07-17T15:23:54.625226

Metadata language

eng; USA