A Note on Water-Vapor Wind Tracking Using VAS Data on McIDAs

Abstract

Eleven data sets where water-vapor winds were obtained from the GOES-5 6.7-micrometer measurement over the United States are compared with rawinsondes. Over 2000 point comparisons are made for: a) an arbitrary height assignment of 400 mb; and b) a height assignment determined by matching the measured brightness temperature to the temperature structure represented in the LFM (Limited Area Fine Mesh) analysis. It is shown that the water vapor winds provide uniform horizontal coverage of midlevel flow with high accuracy (8 mps vector RMS). Furthermore, the radiometric height assignment significantly improves the accuracy.