Abstract
First observations on the vertical structure of diurnal variability of water vapour in the lower and middle atmosphere using 13 years of COSMIC-1 and 18 years of SABER observations over the Asian summer monsoon region are presented in this paper. The most significant and new observation is that the middle stratospheric water vapour (SWV) enhancement is observed between 9 and 18 LT, whereas it is between 6 and 15 LT near tropopause in all the seasons. The diurnal amplitude of water vapour near tropopause is between 0.3 and 0.4 ppmv. Bimodal peaks are found in the diurnal amplitude of SWV, maximizing between 25 and 30 km (~ 0.4 ppmv), and between 45 and 50 km (~ 0.6 ppmv). The analysis reveals that the diurnal variability in the lower SWV is controlled by the tropical tropopause temperature, whereas the middle and upper SWV is primarily controlled by methane oxidation. The results are presented and discussed in the light of present understanding.
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Data availability
The data used in the present study are downloaded from the following websites: SABER: http://saber.gats-inc.com/data.php. COSMIC-1: http://cdaac-www.cosmic.ucar.edu/cdaac/index.html.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are greatly appreciative to the teams of TIMED-SABER and the COSMIC Data Analysis and Archive Centre, and sincerely acknowledged them for providing the data used in this study. Thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on improving the manuscript. The author Veenus Venugopal thank the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for providing a doctoral fellowship during the study period.
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Das, S.S., Uma, K.N., Suneeth, K.V. et al. Diurnal variability of lower and middle atmospheric water vapour over the Asian summer monsoon region: first results from COSMIC-1 and TIMED-SABER measurements. Clim Dyn 59, 3519–3533 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06282-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06282-5