Time Evolution of Integrated Precipitable Water over French Polynesia from 1974 to 2017: Metrological Analysis and Correlation with Climate Evolution
Abstract
In order to better understand and predict the complex meteorological context of French Polynesia, we focus on the time evolution of Integrated Precipitable Water (PW) using Radiosoundings (RS) data from 1974 to 2017. In a first step, we make a comparison over selected months between the PW estimate reconstructed from raw two seconds acquisition and the PW estimate reconstructed from the highly compressed and undersampled Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (IGRA). In a second step, we make a comparison with other techniques of PW acquisition (radio delays, temperature of sky, infrared bands absorption) in order to assess the intrinsic biases of RS acquisition. In a last step, we analyze the PW time series in our area validated at the light of the first and second step, w.r.t seasonality (dry season and wet season) and spatial location. During the wet season (November to April), the PW values are higher than the corresponding values observed during the dry season (May to October). The PW values are smaller with higher latitudes, but there are higher PW values in Tahiti than in other islands because of the presence of the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) around Tahiti. All the PW time series show the same uptrend in French Polynesia in recent years. This study provides further evidence that the PW time series derived from RS can be assimilated in weather forecasting and climate warming models.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMGC41B1016Z
- Keywords:
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- 1616 Climate variability;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4513 Decadal ocean variability;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL;
- 4922 El Nino;
- PALEOCEANOGRAPHY