EGU21-7152, updated on 20 Nov 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7152
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

A systematic assessment of water vapor products in the Arctic: from instantaneous measurements to monthly means

Susanne Crewell1, Kerstin Ebell1, Patrick Konjari1, Mario Mech1, Tatiana Nomokonova1, Ana Radovan1,6, David Strack1, Aranxta Triana-Gomez2, Stefan Noel2, Raul Scarlat2, Gunnar Spreen2, Marion Maturilli3, Rinke Annette3, Gorodetskaya Irina4, Carolina Viceto4, Thomas August5, and Marc Schröder6
Susanne Crewell et al.
  • 1University of Cologne, Inst. for Geophysics and Meteorology, Köln, Germany (susanne.crewell@uni-koeln.de)
  • 2Institute of Environmental Physics, University of Bremen, Germany
  • 3Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Potsdam, Germany
  • 4Centre for Environmental and Marine Sciences, University of Aveiro, Portugal
  • 5Eumetsat, Darmstadt, Germany
  • 6Deutscher Wetterdienst, Offenbach, Germany

Water vapor is an important component in the water and energy cycle of the Arctic. Especially in the light of Arctic amplification, changes of water vapor are of high interest but are difficult to observe due to the data sparsity of the region. The ACLOUD/PASCAL campaign performed in May/June 2017 in the Arctic North Atlantic sector offers the opportunity to investigate the quality of various satellite and numerical model reanalysis products. For this purpose reference Integrated Water Vapor (IWV) measurements at R/V Polarstern frozen into the ice (around 82° N, 10° E) and at t Ny-Ålesund are used to investigate the quality of instantaneous satellite retrievals from AIRS, AMSR2, GOME2, IASI and MIRS. These products use different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum and have different uncertainty characteristics related to the presence of clouds and/or surface characteristics. Therefore, the analysis is expanded to all radiosonde stations within the region. Due to the strong spatio-temporal variability of IWV - in particular during atmospheric river events - sampling issues are important that arise due to the different satellite orbits as well the synoptic radiosonde launch times. Following up on this analysis the question arises whether the satellite data are suitable for a long-term monitoring and trend assessment of water vapor in the Arctic. For this purpose we will also present an analysis of monthly mean values for May and June 2017 - two months with strongly changing surface characteristics in the Arctic - and investigate their performance relative to various reanalyses.

How to cite: Crewell, S., Ebell, K., Konjari, P., Mech, M., Nomokonova, T., Radovan, A., Strack, D., Triana-Gomez, A., Noel, S., Scarlat, R., Spreen, G., Maturilli, M., Annette, R., Irina, G., Viceto, C., August, T., and Schröder, M.: A systematic assessment of water vapor products in the Arctic: from instantaneous measurements to monthly means, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7152, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7152, 2021.

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