Climatology, sources, and transport characteristics of observed water vapor extrema in the lower stratosphere

Tinney, Emily N.; Homeyer, Cameron R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14375-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14375-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-14375-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 22

Research article

|

20 Nov 2023

Research article |

| 20 Nov 2023

Climatology, sources, and transport characteristics of observed water vapor extrema in the lower stratosphere

Emily N. Tinney and Cameron R. Homeyer

Data sets

MLS/Aura Level 2 Water Vapor (H2O) Mixing Ratio V005 A. Lambert, W. Read, and N. Livesey https://doi.org/10.5067/Aura/MLS/DATA2508

MERRA-2 inst3_3d_asm_Nv: 3d, 3-Hourly, Instantaneous, Model-Level, Assimilation, Assimilated Meteorological Fields V5.12.4 Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) https://doi.org/10.5067/WWQSXQ8IVFW8

GPM precipitation feature database C. Liu http://atmos.tamucc.edu/trmm/data/gpm/

Short summary

A long-term record of satellite observations is used to study extreme water vapor concentrations in the lower stratosphere, which are important to climate variability and change. We use a deeper layer of stratospheric observations than prior work to more comprehensively identify these events. We show that extreme water vapor concentrations are frequent, especially in the lowest layers of the stratosphere that have not been analyzed previously.