Characterisations of Europe's integrated water vapour and assessments of atmospheric reanalyses using more than 2 decades of ground-based GPS

Yuan, Peng; Van Malderen, Roeland; Yin, Xungang; Vogelmann, Hannes; Jiang, Weiping; Awange, Joseph; Heck, Bernhard; Kutterer, Hansjörg

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-3517-2023

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-3517-2023

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

Special issue:

Analysis of atmospheric water vapour observations and their...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-3517-2023

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

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

Research article

|

21 Mar 2023

Research article |

| 21 Mar 2023

Characterisations of Europe's integrated water vapour and assessments of atmospheric reanalyses using more than 2 decades of ground-based GPS

Peng Yuan, Roeland Van Malderen, Xungang Yin, Hannes Vogelmann, Weiping Jiang, Joseph Awange, Bernhard Heck, and Hansjörg Kutterer

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-3517-2023-supplement

Data sets

Troposphere Products G. Blewitt, W. C. Hammond, and C. Kreemer http://geodesy.unr.edu/gps_timeseries/trop

ERA5 hourly data on pressure levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach, B. Bell, P. Berrisford, G. Biavati, A. Horányi, J. Muñoz Sabater, J. Nicolas, C. Peubey, R. Radu, I. Rozum, D. Schepers, A. Simmons, C. Soci, D. Dee, and J.-N. Thépaut https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.bd0915c6

ERA Interim, Daily ECMWF https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily/levtype=pl

MERRA-2 inst3_3d_asm_Np: 3d,3-Hourly,Instantaneous,Pressure-Level,Assimilation,Assimilated Meteorological Fields V5.12.4 Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) https://doi.org/10.5067/QBZ6MG944HW0

JRA-55: Japanese 55-year Reanalysis, Daily 3-Hourly and 6-Hourly Data Japan Meteorological Agency https://doi.org/10.5065/D6HH6H41

NCEP/DOE Reanalysis II NOAA PSL https://psl.noaa.gov/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis2.html

NCEP Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2) 6-hourly Products S. Saha, S. Moorthi, X. Wu, J. Wang, S. Nadiga, P. Tripp, D. Behringer, Y.-T. Hou, H.-Y. Chuang, M. Iredell, M. Ek, J. Meng, R. Yang, M. P. Mendez, H. Van Den Dool, Q. Zhang, W. Wang, M. Chen, and E. Becker https://doi.org/10.5065/D61C1TXF

Download

Article (11972 KB)
Full-text XML

Short summary

Water vapour plays an important role in various weather and climate processes. However, due to its large spatiotemporal variability, its high-accuracy quantification remains a challenge. In this study, 20+ years of GPS-derived integrated water vapour (IWV) retrievals in Europe were obtained. They were then used to characterise the temporal features of Europe's IWV and assess six atmospheric reanalyses. Results show that ERA5 outperforms the other reanalyses at most temporal scales.