First Cut at Data Analysis
I thought I would try to give a flavor to analyzing real-time data. The
plot I've attached shows atmospheric water vapor paths and cloud liquid
water paths, produced from a standard microwave radiometer. This is
a cloud remote sensing instrument that points upwards and measures
radiation given off naturally by the atmosphere. It is most responsive to
water vapor and - just like your microwave oven at home -
liquid water. I also have red dots on the plot, to indicate the water vapor paths from another instrument (weather balloon soundings). The red dots
and black points don't always line up together so well! This is my first look
at this data and the challenge now is to figure out what happened. One
interesting thing you can see in the figure, however, is that the red dots
got higher at the end of the plot. This is when the ship was coming
into port, and shows that the land was moister (overall) than the ocean. This
may be because the land surface is usually warmer than the ocean, with
heating of the land from the sun driving an afternoon sea breeze that
brings in moisture off of the ocean into land.
Postcards from the Field: Climate Science from the Southeast Pacific
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