HR: 09:00h
AN: H21I-05    [Abstracts]
TI: Estimating Water Vapor Transport Using a Multiple Satellite Network
AU: * Hilburn, K
EM: hilburn@remss.com
AF: Remote Sensing Systems, 438 First Street Suite 200, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 United States
AU: Wentz, F
EM: frank.wentz@remss.com
AF: Remote Sensing Systems, 438 First Street Suite 200, Santa Rosa, CA 95401 United States
AB: The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the viability of estimating water vapor transport using polar orbiting satellite data. Columnar water vapor estimates are obtained from microwave radiometers with a high degree of accuracy using the Wentz retrieval algorithm. Feature tracking techniques are applied to the water vapor data to estimate the transport vector without resorting to the use of ancillary data (such as analysis wind fields). Successful use of feature tracking is made possible by the large number of satellites used in this study. We use data from 2003 when six radiometers were available: 3 SSMI on the DMSP satellites, TMI on the TRMM satellite, AMSR-E on Aqua, and AMSR on Midori-II. Feature tracking has been used with GOES water vapor imagery to estimate water vapor transport, however these estimates are more indicative of the upper-tropospheric water vapor. Our estimates are more representative of the vertically averaged water vapor transport. We will present 1-degree by 1-degree monthly maps of the zonal and meridional components of water vapor transport as well as water vapor divergence. We will include comparisons of our estimates of the zonal and meridional transport with estimates from existing model analysis, radiosondes, and GOES water vapor transport. We will also present comparisons between our estimates of water vapor divergence and satellite-derived evaporation minus precipitation estimates to assess how far we are from closing the atmospheric branch of the hydrological cycle over the oceans using satellite data alone.
DE: 1655 Water cycles (1836)
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting