Search results for "Vapo"

Estimation of atmospheric water vapour content from direct measurements of radiance in the thermal infrared region

2012

Atmospheric water vapour content is a required parameter in thermal infrared (TIR) to carry out processes such as atmospheric correction or retrieving atmospheric factors (downwelling or upwelling irradiance, transmittance of the atmosphere and so on). This study proposes an alternative method to the ones already in use to measure water vapour content from direct measurements of downwelling atmospheric radiance in the TIR range. It was possible to estimate a linear relationship between atmospheric water vapour and downwelling atmospheric radiance using a simulated study, based on data from a radiosounding database. A subsequent validation concludes that it is possible to obtain water vapour…

Air traffic and contrail changes during COVID-19 over Europe: A model study

2021

The strong reduction of air traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic provides a test case for the relation between air traffic density, contrails, and their radiative forcing of climate change. Air traffic and contrail cirrus changes are quantified for a European domain for March to August 2020 and compared to the same period in 2019. Traffic data show a 72 % reduction in flight distance compared with 2019. This paper investigates the induced contrail changes in a model study. The contrail model results depend on various methodological details tested in parameter studies. In the reference case, the reduced traffic caused an even stronger reduction in contrail length, partly because the w…

Atmospheric water vapour content retrieval from visible and thermal data in the framework of the DAISEX campaigns

2005

In this paper three methods are presented that retrieve the atmospheric water vapour from DAIS (digital airborne imaging spectrometer) data in the framework of the DAISEX (DAIS Experiment) campaigns carried out by ESA (European Space Agency). The three methodologies analysed in the paper are: (i) the ratio technique, in which the water vapour is obtained from visible and near‐infrared bands; (ii) the split‐window technique; and (iii) the split‐window covariance‐variance ratio technique, in which the water vapour content is retrieved from thermal infrared bands. A comparison between the atmospheric water vapour content extracted from the DAIS images using these techniques and that obtained f…

Towards Estimation of Seasonal Water Dynamics of Winter Wheat from Ground-Based L-Band Radiometry 

2021

The vegetation optical depth (VOD) parameter contains information on plant water content and biomass, and can be estimated alongside soil moisture from currently operating satellite radiometer missions, such as SMOS (ESA) and SMAP (NASA). The estimation of water fluxes, such as plant water uptake (PWU) and transpiration rate (TR), from these Earth system parameters (VOD, soil moisture) requires assessing potential (suction tension) gradients of water and flow resistances in the soil, the vegetation and the atmosphere, yet it remains an elusive challenge especially on global scale. Here, we used a field-scale experiment to test mechanistic models for the estimation of seasonal water fluxes (…

Discriminating irrigated and rainfed olive orchards with thermal ASTER imagery and DART 3D simulation

2009

Article in Press

The tropopause inversion layer in baroclinic life-cycle experiments: the role of diabatic processes

2016

Abstract. Recent studies on the formation of a quasi-permanent layer of enhanced static stability above the thermal tropopause revealed the contributions of dynamical and radiative processes. Dry dynamics leads to the evolution of a tropopause inversion layer (TIL), which is, however, too weak compared to observations and thus diabatic contributions are required. In this study we aim to assess the importance of diabatic processes in the understanding of TIL formation at midlatitudes. The non-hydrostatic model COSMO (COnsortium for Small-scale MOdelling) is applied in an idealized midlatitude channel configuration to simulate baroclinic life cycles. The effect of individual diabatic processe…

2018

Abstract. Accurate measurement of water vapor in the climate-sensitive region near the tropopause is very challenging. Unexplained systematic discrepancies between measurements at low water vapor mixing ratios made by different instruments on airborne platforms have limited our ability to adequately address a number of relevant scientific questions on the humidity distribution, cloud formation and climate impact in that region. Therefore, during the past decade, the scientific community has undertaken substantial efforts to understand these discrepancies and improve the quality of water vapor measurements. This study presents a comprehensive intercomparison of airborne state-of-the-art in s…

2021

Abstract. The strong reduction of air traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique test case for the relationship between air traffic density, contrails, and their radiative forcing of climate change. Here, air traffic and contrail cirrus changes are quantified for a European domain for March to August 2020 and compared to the same period in 2019. Traffic data show a 72 % reduction in flight distance compared with 2019. This paper investigates the induced contrail changes in a model study. The contrail model results depend on various methodological details as discussed in parameter studies. In the reference case, the reduced traffic caused a reduction in contrail length. The reduc…

Assessing the suitability of American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) agro-climatology archive to predict daily meteorological v…

2017

Abstract For decades, the importance of evapotranspiration processes has been recognized in many disciplines, including hydrologic and drainage studies, irrigation systems design and management. In this research, the suitability of the Prediction Of Worldwide Energy Resource database published by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (POWER-NASA), to estimate daily meteorological variables and ET 0 was assessed in Sicily, Italy, for the period 2006–2014, based on ground data measured by a network of climate stations belonging to the regional Agro-meteorological Information Service (SIAS). After comparing the climate data (minimum, T min , maximum, T max , and average, T…

Mixed-Phase Clouds: Progress and Challenges

2017

Mixed-phase clouds represent a three-phase colloidal system consisting of water vapor, ice particles, and coexisting supercooled liquid droplets. Mixed-phase clouds are ubiquitous in the troposphere, occurring at all latitudes from the polar regions to the tropics. Because of their widespread nature, mixed-phase processes play critical roles in the life cycle of clouds, precipitation formation, cloud electrification, and the radiative energy balance on both regional and global scales. Yet, in spite of many decades of observations and theoretical studies, our knowledge and understanding of mixed-phase cloud processes remains incomplete. Mixed-phase clouds are notoriously difficult to represe…