An Analysis of Tropospheric Humidity Trends from Radiosondes

McCarthy, Mark; Thorne, Peter; Titchner, Holly A.

doi:10.1175/2009jcli2879.1

Cited by 71 publications

(68 citation statements)

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“…What is more, the reanalysis results here agree with those calculated from radiosonde observations, which similarly show increased temperature and increased specific humidity at 850 mb over the central-western and northwestern United States (Dai 2006; McCarthy et al 2009). The results are also in line with the theoretical increase in the local precipitation rate under a warming atmosphere caused by the increased moisture content that invigorates storms (through latent heat release; Trenberth 1998).…”

Section: ) Possible Dynamicssupporting

confidence: 85%

Observational and Synoptic Analyses of the Winter Precipitation Regime Change over Utah

2012

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Previous studies have indicated a widespread decline in snowpack over Utah accompanied by a decline in the snow-precipitation ratio while anecdotal evidence claims have been put forward that measured changes in Utah's snowpack are spurious and do not reflect actual change. Using two distinct lines of investigation, this paper further analyzes the winter precipitation regime in the state of Utah. First, by means of observationbased, gridded daily temperature, precipitation, and remotely sensed data, as well as utilizing a climatological rain-snow threshold (RST) temperature method, the precipitation regime of Utah was scrutinized. Second, a comprehensive synoptic analysis was conducted as an alternate means that is independent from surface observations. It was found that the proportion of winter (January-March) precipitation falling as snow has decreased by 9% during the last half century, a combined result from a significant increase in rainfall and a minor decrease in snowfall. Meanwhile, observed snow depth across Utah has decreased and is accompanied by consistent decreases in snow cover and surface albedo. Weather systems with the potential to produce precipitation in Utah have decreased in number with those producing snowfall decreasing at a considerably greater rate. Further circulation analysis showed that an anomalous anticyclone has developed over western North America, which acts to reduce the frequency of cyclone waves impacting Utah. Combined with the increased precipitation, this feature suggests that the average precipitation per event has intensified with more of it falling as rain than as snow. Trends in the hydroclimate such as these have implications for present and future regional water policy in the state of Utah.

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Section: ) Possible Dynamicssupporting

confidence: 85%

Observational and Synoptic Analyses of the Winter Precipitation Regime Change over Utah

2012

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“…Such homogenisation algorithms can be neighbour-based procedures (e.g. Durre et al, 2009;McCarthy et al, 2009) and hence also partially anticipate for the spatial inhomogeneity of radiosonde measurements. The use or development of such a homogenisation procedure lies out of the scope of the present paper and the used IGRA database of radiosonde measurements therefore does not constitute a homogeneous data set.…”

Section: Radiosondesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

et al. 2014

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Abstract. Water vapour plays a dominant role in the climate change debate. However, observing water vapour over a climatological time period in a consistent and homogeneous manner is challenging. On one hand, networks of groundbased instruments able to retrieve homogeneous integrated water vapour (IWV) data sets are being set up. Typical examples are Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) observation networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), with continuous GPS (Global Positioning System) observations spanning over the last 15+ years, and the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET), providing long-term observations performed with standardized and well-calibrated sun photometers. On the other hand, satellite-based measurements of IWV already have a time span of over 10 years (e.g. AIRS) or are being merged to create long-term time series (e.g. GOME, SCIAMACHY, and GOME-2).This study performs an intercomparison of IWV measurements from satellite devices (in the visible, GOME/SCIAMACHY/GOME-2, and in the thermal infrared, AIRS), in situ measurements (radiosondes) and ground-based instruments (GPS, sun photometer), to assess their use in water vapour trends analysis. To this end, we selected 28 sites world-wide for which GPS observations can directly be compared with coincident satellite IWV observations, together with sun photometer and/or radiosonde measurements. The mean biases of the different techniques compared to the GPS estimates vary only between −0.3 to 0.5 mm of IWV. Nevertheless these small biases are accompanied by large standard deviations (SD), especially for the satellite instruments. In particular, we analysed the impact of clouds on the IWV agreement. The influence of specific issues for each instrument on the intercomparison is also investigated (e.g. the distance between the satellite ground pixel centre and the co-located ground-based station, the satellite scan angle, daytime/nighttime differences). Furthermore, we checked if the properties of the IWV scatter plots between these different instruments are dependent on the geography and/or altitude of the station. For all considered instruments, the only dependency clearly detected is with latitude: the SD of the IWV observations with respect to the GPS IWV retrievals decreases with increasing latitude and decreasing mean IWV.

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“…when the simultaneous temperature exceeds a threshold (specific to individual National Meteorological Services' recording methods) has been a common practice historically with radiosondes (Elliott, 1995;McCarthy, 2009). This has also been found in surface stations both for hot and cold extremes (Willett et al, 2008).…”

Section: Cutoffs Of Dewpoint Temperatures At Temperature Extremes Symentioning

confidence: 99%

HadISD: a quality-controlled global synoptic report database for selected variables at long-term stations from 1973–2011

et al. 2012

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Abstract. This paper describes the creation of HadISD: an automatically quality-controlled synoptic resolution dataset of temperature, dewpoint temperature, sea-level pressure, wind speed, wind direction and cloud cover from global weather stations for 1973-2011. The full dataset consists of over 6000 stations, with 3427 long-term stations deemed to have sufficient sampling and quality for climate applications requiring sub-daily resolution. As with other surface datasets, coverage is heavily skewed towards Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes.The dataset is constructed from a large pre-existing ASCII flatfile data bank that represents over a decade of substantial effort at data retrieval, reformatting and provision. These raw data have had varying levels of quality control applied to them by individual data providers. The work proceeded in several steps: merging stations with multiple reporting identifiers; reformatting to netCDF; quality control; and then filtering to form a final dataset. Particular attention has been paid to maintaining true extreme values where possible within an automated, objective process. Detailed validation has been performed on a subset of global stations and also on UK data using known extreme events to help finalise the QC tests. Further validation was performed on a selection of extreme events world-wide (Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the cold snap in Alaska in 1989 and heat waves in SE Australia in 2009). Some very initial analyses are performed to illustrate some of the types of problems to which the final data could be applied. Although the filtering has removed the poorest station records, no attempt has been made to homogenise the data thus far, due to the complexity of retaining the true distribution of high-resolution data when applying adjustments. Hence non-climatic, time-varying errors may still exist in many of the individual station records and care is needed in inferring long-term trends from these data.This dataset will allow the study of high frequency variations of temperature, pressure and humidity on a global basis over the last four decades. Both individual extremes and the overall population of extreme events could be investigated in detail to allow for comparison with past and projected climate. A version-control system has been constructed for this dataset to allow for the clear documentation of any updates and corrections in the future.

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An Analysis of Tropospheric Humidity Trends from Radiosondes

Cited by 71 publications

References 50 publications

Observational and Synoptic Analyses of the Winter Precipitation Regime Change over Utah

Observational and Synoptic Analyses of the Winter Precipitation Regime Change over Utah

A multi-site intercomparison of integrated water vapour observations for climate change analysis

HadISD: a quality-controlled global synoptic report database for selected variables at long-term stations from 1973–2011

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