Prediction of water vapor scale height from integrated water vapor measurements

A method for estimating the 10% height of water vapor in the atmosphere is presented. This 10% height is the altitude below which 10% of the atmospheric water vapor vertical distribution occurs. The estimation is based on a time series of ground-based measurements of integrated water vapor, and results from the behavior of the turbulence structure function for water vapor outside of the outer scale of tropospheric turbulence. This behavior is demonstrated by a model which expands on earlier work by Treuhaft and Lanyi on the behavior of atmospheric turbulence in a “frozen” atmosphere. The model integrates statistics of the climatological average water vapor profile with wind and integrated water vapor measurements. Microwave water vapor radiometer, radar wind profiler, and radiosonde data from the Continental Stratus campaign have been processed and the results are presented in support of the model. It is shown that, through the combination of integrated water vapor data from a microwave radiometer, wind profile data from a tropospheric radar, and a realistic model created with local radiosonde launches, the water vapor 10% height in the atmosphere can be successfully predicted with a simple algorithm