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OCR for page 1
Summary
Water vapor plays a vital role in shaping weather and climate on
Earth. Hence, monitoring water vapor is critical if we are to explain and
predict the behavior of the climate system. Unfortunately, measuring
and analyzing water vapor on the time and space scales needed for this
purpose have proven elusive. Therefore, it is appropriate and timely for
the international climate research community, through the Global
Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX), to focus a project
around water vapor. To this end, a GEWEX Global Water Vapor
Project (GVaP) has been proposed, and drain Science and
Implementation Plans have been developed. As requested by the U.S.
Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the National Research
Council's (NRC) GEWEX Panel has reviewed these plans with an eye
toward U.S. priorities. The pane] commends GVaP for attempting to
bring together the diverse water vapor measurement and research
communities. The ultimate objectives of GVaP are laudable and should
be vigorously pursued, both for their own scientific merit and
especially for their potential contributions to the breadth of
hydrometeorological research.
To achieve its potential, the project should give particular attention
to the following activities (described more fully in the body of the
report), many of which are already integral elements of the draft GVaP
plans:
· Gather, assess, and distribute existing water vapor data sets
and products.
Coordinate clata set intercalibration and comparison with
results from validation experiments.
· Highlight upper tropospheric water vapor.
Create new water vapor products, including a merged global
water vapor product.
OCR for page 2
Foster broad community involvement.
In particular, strong interaction with the operational weather
community and the broader hydrometeorological research community
will also help to ensure that the promise of GVaP is fulfilled.
Because water vapor data are needed by the U.S. climate research
community, the United States should participate in the international
GVaP to better leverage the nation's resources. Contributions that the
United States should make in addition to its current activities such as
remote sensing include the following: (a) improve instruments and
analysis techniques, with special emphasis on efforts to increase
vertical and temporal resolution and to improve measurements of water
vapor in the upper troposphere-lower stratosphere; (b) implement use
of reference radiosondes; (c) provide critical, high quality data sets to
validate satellite remote sensing results; (~) lead the effort to compare
and evaluate available and new data sets; and (e) undertake a new
synthesis of existing and new sources of information about water vapor
to produce a global water vapor data set. in addition, the pane]
recommends that U.S. agencies consider targeting support for one or
more of the individual GVaP Data Centers and/or the Central Facility,
as appropriate.
2
Representative terms from entire chapter:
vapor data
