ESA Water Vapour Climate Change Initiative - 2nd User workshop

(online) Potential water vapor satellite measurement biases coming from water vapor variability within the instrument field of view

Not scheduled

15m

Room 4001b (FZ Jülich; Building 15.9 (INM))

oral Tropospheric Water Vapour

Speaker

Xavier Calbet (AEMET)

Description

Evidence suggests that water vapor at small scales (< 6 km) behaves, to a first order, as a Gaussian Random Field (Calbet et al. AMT 2022) following a Kolmogorov turbulence type behavior. As a consequence, water vapor concentration at small scales has a highly stochastic nature and can show a significant variation. This has implications for the radiative transfer modelling commonly used in satellite based water vapor retrievals. The variability of water vapor concentration within the field of view of satellite based instruments can have a significant impact in the radiative transfer modelling. Ignoring these effects can lead, under some circumstances, to significant biases in satellite water vapor retrievals (Calbet et al. AMT 2018). This effect can propagate to water vapor Climate Data Records. In this article, the current status of this line of research will be presented together with potential solutions.