Abstract
In order to better understand upper tropospheric humidity and formation of persistent contrails, we analyzed radiosonde sounding data from selected stations of the US National Weather Service for a five year period. We used 55,177 individual corrected Vaisala RS80-H profiles over 15 USA stations from September 2000 to September 2005 for our analysis. These corrections are critical when investigating ice supersaturation in the upper troposphere. Using these corrected measurements for each season and location, we calculated key parameters of ice supersaturated layers (ISSLs): geometric thickness, frequency, and number of ice supersaturated layers per profile along with their probability distributions. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to contrail formation and mitigation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 169-173 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| Journal | DLR Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. - Forschungsberichte |
| Issue number | 10 |
| State | Published - 2010 |
Keywords
- Cirrus
- Contrail
- Ice supersaturation
- Radiosonde