NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Collections About News Help Login
Back to Results
Water Vapor Measurements by Howard University Raman Lidar during the WAVES 2006 CampaignRetrieval of water vapor mixing ratio using the Howard University Raman Lidar is presented with emphasis on three aspects: i) performance of the lidar against collocated radiosondes and Raman lidar, ii) investigation of the atmospheric state variables when poor agreement between lidar and radiosondes values occurred and iii) a comparison with satellite-based measurements. The measurements were acquired during the Water Vapor Validation Experiment Sondes/Satellites 2006 field campaign. Ensemble averaging of water vapor mixing ratio data from ten night-time comparisons with Vaisala RS92 radiosondes shows on average an agreement within 10 % up to approx. 8 km. A similar analysis of lidar-to-lidar data of over 700 profiles revealed an agreement to within 20 % over the first 7 km (10 % below 4 km). A grid analysis, defined in the temperature - relative humidity space, was developed to characterize the lidar - radiosonde agreement and quantitatively localizes regions of strong and weak correlations as a function of altitude, temperature or relative humidity. Three main regions of weak correlation emerge: i) regions of low relative humidity and low temperature, ii) moderate relative humidity at low temperatures and iii) low relative humidity at moderate temperatures. Comparison of Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder and Tropospheric Emission Sounder satellites retrievals of moisture with that of Howard University Raman Lidar showed a general agreement in the trend but the formers miss a lot of the details in atmospheric structure due to their low resolution. A relative difference of about 20 % is usually found between lidar and satellites measurements.
Document ID
20090019713
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
Authors
Adam, M. (Howard Univ. Washington, DC, United States)
Demoz, B. B. (Howard Univ. Washington, DC, United States)
Whiteman, D. N. (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Venable, D. D. (Howard Univ. Washington, DC, United States)
Joseph E. (Howard Univ. Washington, DC, United States)
Gambacorta, A. (Perot System Government Services Camp Springs, MD, United States)
Wei, J. (Perot System Government Services Camp Springs, MD, United States)
Shephard, M. W. (Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. Lexington, MA, United States)
Miloshevich, L. M. (National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder, CO, United States)
Barnet, C. D. (National Environmental Satellite Service Camp Springs, MD, United States)
Herman, R. L. (Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Fitzgibbon, J. (National Weather Service Sterling, VA, United States)
Connell, R. (Howard Univ. Washington, DC, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2009
Subject Category
Oceanography
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.

Related Records

There are no records associated with this record.
No Preview Available