The WCRP/SPARC WAVAS-II Initiative: Quality assessment of stratospheric water vapour records from contemporary satellites

 

The figure shows the latitude and altitude dependence of the amplitude of the seasonal variation of water vapour in the stratosphere. The left panel is the representation of the seasonal variations as observed by MLS. Several boxes indicate altitude/latitude regions where the seasonal variation is most pronounced. The right panel is a comparison of the seasonal amplitudes from all satellite data sets under assessment, for the 5o S - 5o N latitude band only.

The WCRP/SPARC WAVAS-II activity assesses the quality of data records obtained from satellite measurements that where operation in 2000 and later. In total 40 data records from 15 satellite instruments have been intercompared. The paper presented here analyses the representation of short-term variability (seasonal, semi-annual and QBO-dependent) in the data records.

For more information see: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-1111-2017

All WAVAS-II related publications are collected in the following ACP/AMT/ESSD special issue:
http://www.atmos-meas-tech.net/special_issue10_830.html