Boundary layer water vapour statistics from high-spatial-resolution spaceborne imaging spectroscopy

Richardson, Mark T.; Thompson, David R.; Kurowski, Marcin J.; Lebsock, Matthew D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-5555-2021

Articles | Volume 14, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-5555-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-5555-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 8

Research article

|

13 Aug 2021

Research article |

| 13 Aug 2021

Boundary layer water vapour statistics from high-spatial-resolution spaceborne imaging spectroscopy

Mark T. Richardson, David R. Thompson, Marcin J. Kurowski, and Matthew D. Lebsock

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-5555-2021-supplement

Data sets

Isofit 2.8.0 P. Brodrick, A. Erickson, J. Fahlen, W. Olson, D. R. Thompson, A. Shiklomanov, S. P. Serbin, N. Carmon, and Lewis J. McGibbney https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4614338

Model code and software

MODTRAN6: a major upgrade of the MODTRAN radiative transfer code (http://modtran.spectral.com) A. Berk, P. Conforti, R. Kennett, T. Perkins, F. Hawes, and J. van den Bosch https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2050433

An accelerated line- by-line option for MODTRAN combining on-the-fly genera- tion of line center absorption within 0.1 cm−1 bins and pre- computed line tails (http://modtran.spectral.com) A. Berk, P. Conforti, and F. Hawes https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2177444

Short summary

Modern and upcoming hyperspectral imagers will take images with spatial resolutions as fine as 20 m. They can retrieve column water vapour, and we show evidence that from these column measurements you can get statistics of planetary boundary layer (PBL) water vapour. This is important information for climate models that need to account for sub-grid mixing of water vapour near the surface in their PBL schemes.