Publications

Leinweber, Ronny; Fischer, Juergen (2014). Water vapour in BALTIMOS: a comparison with MODIS measurements. THEORETICAL AND APPLIED CLIMATOLOGY, 118(4), 611-616.

Abstract
In this paper, we compare integrated water vapour (IWV) retrievals from the Moderate Resolution Spectrometer (MODIS) instrument on board the polar-orbiting Terra platform with those from the coupled regional climate model system BALTIMOS for a period of 2 years (October 2001 to October 2003). The comparison was made for the whole drainage basin of the Baltic Sea as well as major parts of Central Europe. The qualitative comparison between the two data sets of the integrated water vapour shows a good agreement. The patterns in the spatial distribution of the averaged integrated water vapour in both data sets are quite similar. However, significant differences occur in the Hungarian Lowlands, along the Po River and the Wallachia (Romania) in the order of 2.5 to 7.0 kg/m(2). For these areas, the BALTIMOS model is dryer than the MODIS observations. This could be an indication for the known summer drying effect of BALTIMOS but needs further investigations. The annual cycle as well as a diurnal developing of integrated water vapour from 09:00 to 12:00 UTC is well pronounced in both data sets. For both data sets, the overall annual variations are 17.5 kg/m(2). The observed overall diurnal variability are 1.4 kg/m(2) for MODIS and 1.04 kg/m(2) for BALTIMOS, respectively.

DOI:
10.1007/s00704-009-0179-9

ISSN:
0177-798X