Altitude Profiles of Tropospheric Water Vapor at Low Latitudes

Abstract

The altitude profiles of water vapor density, ?, in the troposphere at low latitudes have been studied using radiosonde observations over nine stations in India. An attempt has been made to evolve a satisfactory model for the altitude variation of ? in terms of the surface value. It has been found that a simple exponential relation with constant scale height parameter is not always adequate for this purpose. The scale height parameter shows significant variation with altitude. A double exponential profile having two different scale height parameters is found to be more suitable for most of the cases.