Open AccessRigorous determination of stratospheric water vapor trends from MIPAS observations
Author(s) -
Simone Ceccherini,
B. Carli,
Piera Raspollini,
Marco Ridolfi
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.19.00a340
Subject(s) - water vapor , environmental science , latitude , northern hemisphere , stratosphere , atmospheric sciences , radiometric calibration , calibration , southern hemisphere , troposphere , meteorology , remote sensing , climatology , geology , geodesy , physics , statistics , mathematics
The trend of stratospheric water vapor as a function of latitude is estimated by the MIPAS measurements by means of a new method that uses the measurement space solution. The method uses all the information provided by the observations avoiding the artifacts introduced by the a priori information and by the interpolation to different vertical grids. The analysis provides very precise values of the trends that, however, are limited by a relatively large systematic error induced by the radiometric calibration error of the instrument. The results show in the five years from 2005 to 2009 a dependence on latitude of the stratospheric (from 37 to 53 km) water vapor trend with a positive value of (0.41 ± 0.16)%yr-1 in the northern hemisphere and less than 0.16%yr-1 in the southern hemisphere.