Retrieval of water vapor in the tropopause region from CRISTA measurements

Abstract

Abstract The Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere (CRISTA) instrument was developed to provide global measurements of atmospheric infrared emissions with increased horizontal resolution. The moderate spectral resolution (λ/Δλ) of about 500 is sufficient to obtain valuable information on trace-gas distributions in the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere. This paper presents a description of the first retrieval of global water vapor distributions near the tropopause in the mid-infrared. The retrieval scheme takes advantage of the large coverage of spectral measurements which allows an optimal selection of the spectral feature for retrieval. The results are of unprecedented spatial resolution (horizontally and vertically) for a global data set.