Abstract
We use microwave retrievals of upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) to estimate the impact of clear-sky-only sampling by infrared instruments on the distribution, variability, and trends in UTH. Our method isolates the impact of the clear-sky-only sampling, without convolving errors from other sources. On daily time scales, IR-sampled UTH contains large data gaps in convectively active areas, with only about 20-30 % of the tropics (30S-30N) being sampled. This results in a dry bias of about -9 %RH in the area-weighted tropical daily UTH time series. On monthly scales, maximum clear-sky bias (CSB) is up to -30 %RH over convectively active areas. The magnitude of CSB shows significant correlations with UTH itself (-0.5) and also with the variability in UTH (-0.6). We also show that IR-sampled UTH time series have higher interannual variability and smaller trends compared to microwave sampling. We argue that a significant part of the smaller trend results from the contrasting influence of diurnal drift in the satellite measurements on the wet and dry regions of the tropics.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | D14108 |
Journal | Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres |
Volume | 116 |
Issue number | 14 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2011 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geophysics
- Forestry
- Oceanography
- Aquatic Science
- Ecology
- Water Science and Technology
- Soil Science
- Geochemistry and Petrology
- Earth-Surface Processes
- Atmospheric Science
- Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous)
- Space and Planetary Science
- Palaeontology