Integrated Water Vapour mapping using vertical Wind Profiles

Water vapour in the atmosphere is a key variable in the prediction of heavy rain and thunderstorms. Water vapour in the atmosphere is still badly modeled although more and more ground based, airborne, as well as spaceborne measurements are retrieved. The main input for current water vapour maps are Integrated Water Vapour (IWV) measurements obtained every 15 minutes from GPS ground stations. My graduation project focuses on the question whether the combination of water vapour measurements and wind measurements can increase the quality of these water vapour maps. The increase in quality is expected as wind is moving the water vapour, also called advecting. Therefore in addition, 3D wind data obtained from HIRLAM is incorporated in the map making. HIRLAM is the abbreviation for High Resolution Limited Area Model for Numerical Weather Prediction, and this model is created by a European consortium of meteorological institutes. A modified Kriging interpolation approach is used to combine both current measurements and measurements from the past advected by the wind. By using a case study it is investigated whether the IWV prediction in between the GPS ground stations could be improved. For this case study, and using this method, we can conclude that on average the IWV maps are not improved by incorporating advected measurements. However, there are also locations for which the IWV predictions are improved.Remote SensingAerospace Engineerin