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An accurate characterization of the vertical structure of the Arcticatmosphere is useful in climate change and attribution studies as well asfor the climate modelling community to improve projections of future climateover this highly sensitive region. Here, we investigate one of the dominantfeatures of the vertical structure of the Arctic atmosphere, i.e.water-vapour inversions, using eight years of Atmospheric Infrared Sounderdata (2002–2010) and radiosounding profiles released from the two Arcticlocations (North Slope of Alaska at Barrow and during SHEBA). We quantifythe characteristics of clear-sky water vapour inversions in terms of theirfrequency of occurrence, strength and height covering the entire Arctic forthe first time.  We found that the frequency of occurrence of water-vapour inversions ishighest during winter and lowest during summer. The inversion strength is,however, higher during summer. The observed peaks in the medianinversion-layer heights are higher during the winter half of the year, ataround 850 hPa over most of the Arctic Ocean, Siberia and the CanadianArchipelago, while being around 925 hPa during most of the summer half ofthe year over the Arctic Ocean. The radiosounding profiles agree with thefrequency, location and strength of water-vapour inversions in the Pacificsector of the Arctic. In addition, the radiosoundings indicate that multipleinversions are the norm with relatively few cases without inversions. Theamount of precipitable water within the water-vapour inversion structures isestimated and we find a distinct, two-mode contribution to the total columnprecipitable water. These results suggest that water-vapour inversions are asignificant source to the column thermodynamics, especially during thecolder winter and spring seasons. We argue that these inversions are arobust metric to test the reproducibility of thermodynamics within climatemodels. An accurate statistical representation of water-vapour inversions inmodels would mean that the large-scale coupling of moisture transport,precipitation, temperature and water-vapour vertical structure and radiationare essentially captured well in such models

Characteristics of water-vapour inversions observed over the Arctic by Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) and radiosondes