Monitoring of Integrated Water Vapour from ground-based GPS observations and their assimilation in a limited-area NWP model

2002 ◽  
Vol 27 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 341-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Tomassini ◽  
G. Gendt ◽  
G. Dick ◽  
M. Ramatschi ◽  
C. Schraff
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (14) ◽  
pp. 9453-9468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Bock ◽  
Ana C. Parracho

Abstract. This study examines the consistency and representativeness differences of daily integrated water vapour (IWV) data from ERA-Interim reanalysis and GPS observations at 120 global sites over a 16-year period (1995–2010). Various comparison statistics are analysed as a function of geographic, topographic, and climatic features. A small (±1 kg m−2) bias is found in the reanalysis across latitudes (moist in northern and southern midlatitudes and dry in the tropics). The standard deviation of daily IWV differences is generally below 2 kg m−2 but peaks in the northern and southern storm-track regions. In general, the larger IWV differences are explained by increased representativeness errors, when GPS observations capture some small-scale variability that is not resolved by the reanalysis. A representativeness error statistic is proposed which measures the spatiotemporal variability in the vicinity of the GPS sites, based on reanalysis data at the four surrounding grid points. It allows to predict the standard deviation of daily IWV differences with a correlation of 0.73. In general, representativeness differences can be reduced by temporal averaging and spatial interpolation from the four surrounding grid points. A small number of outlying cases (15 sites) which do not follow the general tendencies are further examined. It is found that their special topographic and climatic features strongly enhance the representativeness errors (e.g. steep topography, coastlines, and strong seasonal cycle in monsoon regions). Discarding these sites significantly improves the global ERA-Interim and GPS comparison results. The selection of sites a priori, based on the representativeness error statistic, is able to detect 11 out of the 15 sites and improve the comparison results by 20 % to 30 %.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana C. Parracho ◽  
Olivier Bock ◽  
Sophie Bastin

Abstract. Water vapour plays a key role in the climate system. However, its short residence time in the atmosphere and its high variability in space and time make it challenging when it comes to study trends and variability. There are several sources of water vapour data. In this work we use Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) estimated from GPS observations and atmospheric reanalyses. Monthly and seasonal means, interannual variability, and linear trends are analysed and compared for the period between 1995 and 2010. A general good agreement is found but this study highlights issues in both GPS and reanalysis data sets. In GPS, gaps and inhomogeneities in the time series are evidenced, which affect mainly variability and trend estimation. In ERA-Interim, too strong trends in certain regions (e.g. drying over northern Africa and Australia, and moistening over northern South America) were found. Representativeness differences in coastal areas and regions of complex topography (mountain ranges, islands) are also evidenced as limitations to the intercomparison of the point observations and reanalysis data. A general good agreement is found for the means and variabilities, with the exception of a few stations where representativeness issues are suspected. Monthly IWV trends are also found to be in good sign agreement, with the exception of a handful of stations where, in addition to representativeness errors, there might be inhomogeneities in the GPS time series. Seasonal trends are found to be different and more intense than monthly trends, which emphasizes the influence of atmospheric circulation on IWV trends. In order to assess strong trends over regions lacking GPS stations, a second reanalysis, MERRA-2, is introduced. The period of analysis is extended to 1980–2016 (the longest period the reanalyses have in common) and differences with the shorter period are found. This exemplifies how much IWV trends are dependent on the time period at study and must be interpreted carefully. Temperature trends are also computed for both reanalyses. The Clausius-Clapeyron scaling ratio is found to not be a good humidity proxy at seasonal and regional scales. Regions over northern Africa and Australia, where ERA-Interim and MERRA-2 disagree, are investigated further. Dynamics at these regions is assessed by analyzing the wind fields at 925 hPa and is shown to be tightly linked with the trends and variability in IWV.


MAUSAM ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-106
Author(s):  
R. K. GIRI ◽  
L. R. MEENA ◽  
S. S. BHANDARI ◽  
R. C. BHATIA

Water vapour is highly variable in space and time, and plays a large role in atmospheric processes that act over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales on global climate to micrometeorology. This paper deals with a new approach to remotely sense the water vapour based on the Global Position System (GPS). The signal propagating from GPS satellites to ground based receivers is delayed by atmospheric water vapour. The delay is parameterized in terms of time varying Zenith-Wet Delay (ZWD), which is retrieved by stochastic filtering of GPS data. With the help of surface pressure and temperature readings at the GPS receiver, the retrieved ZWD can be transformed into Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) overlying at the receiver with little additional uncertainties. In this study the Zenith Total time Delay (ZTD) data without met package is retrieved using the GAMIT (King and Bock, 1997) GPS data processing software developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the period of January 2003 to February 2003 for two stations New Delhi and Bangalore .The IWV retrieved from GPS and its comparison with Limited Area Model (LAM) retrieved IWV shows fairly good agreement.


2012 ◽  
Vol 140 (3) ◽  
pp. 1014-1022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuomo Lauri ◽  
Jarmo Koistinen ◽  
Dmitri Moisseev

When making radar-based precipitation products, a radar measurement is commonly taken to represent the geographical location vertically below the contributing volume of the measurement sample. However, when wind is present during the fall of the hydrometeors, precipitation will be displaced horizontally from the geographical location of the radar measurement. Horizontal advection will introduce discrepancies between the radar-measured and ground level precipitation fields. The significance of the adjustment depends on a variety of factors related to the characteristics of the observed precipitation as well as those of the desired end product. In this paper the authors present an advection adjustment scheme for radar precipitation observations using estimated hydrometeor trajectories obtained from the High-Resolution Limited-Area Model (HIRLAM) MB71 NWP model data. They use the method to correct the operational Finnish radar composite and evaluate the significance of precipitation advection in typical Finnish conditions. The results show that advection distances on the order of tens of kilometers are consistently observed near the edge of the composite at ranges of 100–250 km from the nearest radar, even when using a low elevation angle of 0.3°. The Finnish wind climatology suggests that approximately 15% of single radar measurement areas are lost on average when estimating ground level rainfall if no advection adjustment is applied. For the Finnish composite, area reductions of approximately 10% have been observed, while the measuring area is extended downstream by a similar amount. Advection becomes increasingly important at all ranges in snowfall with maximum distances exceeding 100 km.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 5-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Federico ◽  
E. Avolio ◽  
C. Bellecci ◽  
A. Lavagnini ◽  
R. L. Walko

Abstract. This study investigates the sensitivity of a moderate-intense storm that occurred over Calabria, southern Italy, to upper-tropospheric forcing from a Potential Vorticity (PV) perspective. A prominent mid-troposheric trough can be identified for this event, which occurred between 22–24 May 2002, and serves as the precursor agent for the moderate-intense precipitation recorded. The working hypothesis is that the uncertainty in the representation of the upper-level disturbance has a major impact on the precipitation forecast and we test the hypothesis in a two-step approach. First, we examine the degree of uncertainty by comparing five different scenarios in a Limited area model Ensemble Prediction System (LEPS) framework which utilizes the height of the dynamical tropopause as the discriminating variable. Pseudo water vapour images of different scenarios are compared to the corresponding METEOSAT 7 water vapour image at a specific time, antecedent to the rain occurrence over Calabria, in order to evaluate the reliability of the different precipitation scenarios simulated by the LEPS. Second, we examine the impact of upper tropospheric PV variations on precipitation by comparing model simulations with slightly different initial PV fields. Initial velocity and mass fields in each case are balanced with the chosen PV perturbation using a PV inversion technique. The results of this study support the working hypothesis.


Author(s):  
T. A. Musa ◽  
M. H. Mazlan ◽  
Y. D. Opaluwa ◽  
I. A. Musliman ◽  
Z. M. Radzi

This paper presents the development of T<sub>M</sub> model by using the radiosonde stations from Peninsular Malaysia. Two types of T<sub>M</sub> model were developed; site-specific and regional models. The result revealed that the estimation from site-specific model has small improvement compared to the regional model, indicating that the regional model is adequately to use in estimation of GPS-derived IWV over Peninsular Malaysia. Meanwhile, this study found that the diurnal cycle of T<sub>S</sub> has influenced the T<sub>M</sub>&amp;ndash;T<sub>S</sub> relationship. The separation between daytime and nighttime observation can improve the relationship of T<sub>M</sub>&amp;ndash;T<sub>S</sub>. However, the impact of diurnal cycle to IWV estimation is less than 1&amp;thinsp;%. The T<sub>M</sub> model from Global and Tropic also been evaluated. The Tropic T<sub>M</sub> model is superior to be utilized as compared to the Global T<sub>M</sub> model.


Author(s):  
S. Salihin ◽  
T. A. Musa ◽  
Z. Mohd Radzi

This paper provides the precise information on spatial-temporal distribution of water vapour that was retrieved from Zenith Path Delay (ZPD) which was estimated by Global Positioning System (GPS) processing over the Malaysian Peninsular. A time series analysis of these ZPD and Integrated Water Vapor (IWV) values was done to capture the characteristic on their seasonal variation during monsoon seasons. This study was found that the pattern and distribution of atmospheric water vapour over Malaysian Peninsular in whole four years periods were influenced by two inter-monsoon and two monsoon seasons which are First Inter-monsoon, Second Inter-monsoon, Southwest monsoon and Northeast monsoon.


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