Horizontal small-scale variability of water vapor in the atmosphere: implications for intercomparison of data from different measuring systems
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Date
2022-12-09
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Citation of Original Publication
Calbet, X., Carbajal Henken, C., DeSouza-Machado, S., Sun, B., and Reale, T.: Horizontal small-scale variability of water vapor in the atmosphere: implications for intercomparison of data from different measuring systems, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 15, 7105–7118, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-7105-2022, 2022.
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Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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Abstract
Water vapor concentration structures in the atmosphere are well approximated horizontally by Gaussian random fields at small scales ( . 6 km). These Gaussian random
fields have a spatial correlation in accordance with a structure
function with a two-thirds slope, following the corresponding
law from Kolmogorov’s theory of turbulence. This is proven
by showing that the horizontal structure functions measured
by several satellite instruments and radiosonde measurements do indeed follow the two-thirds law. High-spatialresolution retrievals of total column water vapor (TCWV)
obtained from the Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI)
on board the Sentinel-3 series of satellites also qualitatively
show a Gaussian random field structure.
As a consequence, the atmosphere has an inherently
stochastic component associated with the horizontal smallscale water vapor features, which, in turn, can make deterministic forecasting or nowcasting difficult. These results can
be useful in areas where high-resolution modeling of water
vapor is required, such as the estimation of the water vapor
variance within a region or when searching for consistency
between different water vapor measurements in neighboring
locations. In terms of weather forecasting or nowcasting, the
water vapor horizontal variability could be important in estimating the uncertainty of the atmospheric processes driving
convection.