Dataset: Water vapour profiles from WAVAS SAtellite component in HARmonized format (WAVAS_SAHAR)

This is the databank of satellite vertical profiles of the water vapour, that have participated in SPARC WAVAS assessment, in a harmonized format, WAVAS_SAHAR. All vertically-resolved satellite measurements of the tropospheric and stratospheric water vapour in the time period between 1984 and 2018 are included. The databank consists of water vapour profiles retrieved from each instrument, which are screened for invalid data according to recommendations of instruments’ teams, then transformed into a common unit and interpolated on a common grid. The data versions included are those existing at the moment of WAVAS exercise, hence not always the most recent at the time of publishing.

There exist two versions of the databank: volume mixing ratio profiles on common pressure grid and volume mixing ratio profiles on common altitude grid. The pressure grid corresponds to vertical sampling of appr. 1 km below 20 km and appr. 2–3 km above 20 km; the altitude grid has 1-km step. The altitude range of the profiles provided varies from instrument to instrument. Geolocation, uncertainty estimates when available, and vertical resolution are provided for each profile. For some instruments, quality-related optional parameters are provided as well. This is one stop source for satellite vertical profiles of water vapour for the period 1984–2018. This databank is useful for a wide range of atmospheric applications, targets a wide range of users from modellers to scientists, and can be interesting for purposes of validation, assimilation, data merging, and atmospheric research. The databank WAVAS_SAHAR has been created in the framework of the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative project.