The Statistical Structure of the Humidity Field in the Atmosphere

Abstract

During recent decades, several studies (for instance [33, 257, 290, 291, and 294]) of the structure of the humidity field have been made using the methods of mathematical statistics. Komarov [140, 141] made use of a considerably larger volume of data to obtain the statistical characteristics of the humidity field in the atmosphere. He included material from radiosonde observations at many points in the Northern Hemisphere from 1961 to 1970. For each point, the data of 200–500 separate soundings of the atmosphere were used, ensuring an accurate calculation of the statistical quantities (the statistical error e in determining, for instance, the mean value q̄ is from 3 to 7% of q4, that is, ɛ/q4 = 0.03–0.07). During processing, information about the air temperature and humidity at the principal isobaric surfaces was included as well as data for so-called separate points (the upper and lower boundaries of inversion and isothermal layers, the tropopause, and levels of sudden change in a vertical gradient). To provide a more detailed description of the field structure, the data were interpolated, so as to give a high height resolution (25 mb in the layer from the ground up to the 100-mb level, and 10 mb above the 100-mb level).