Humidity Profiles over the Ocean

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Abstract
The distribution of water vapor in the atmosphere affects climate change through radiative balance and surface evaporation. The variabilities of atmospheric humidity profile over oceans from daily to interannual time scales were examined using nine years of daily and semidaily radiosonde soundings at island stations extending from the Arctic to the South Pacific. The relative humidity profiles were found to have considerable temporal and geographic variabilities, contrary to the prevalent assumption. Principal component analysis on the profiles of specific humidity were used to examine the applicability of a relation between the surface-level humidity and the integrated water vapor; this relation has been used to estimate large-scale evaporation from satellite data. The first principal component was found to correlate almost perfectly with the integrated water vapor. The fractional variance represented by this mode increases with increasing period. It reaches approximately 90% at two weeks and de... Abstract The distribution of water vapor in the atmosphere affects climate change through radiative balance and surface evaporation. The variabilities of atmospheric humidity profile over oceans from daily to interannual time scales were examined using nine years of daily and semidaily radiosonde soundings at island stations extending from the Arctic to the South Pacific. The relative humidity profiles were found to have considerable temporal and geographic variabilities, contrary to the prevalent assumption. Principal component analysis on the profiles of specific humidity were used to examine the applicability of a relation between the surface-level humidity and the integrated water vapor; this relation has been used to estimate large-scale evaporation from satellite data. The first principal component was found to correlate almost perfectly with the integrated water vapor. The fractional variance represented by this mode increases with increasing period. It reaches approximately 90% at two weeks and de...

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