The Application of COCONet to Determine Water Vapor Variability in the Caribbean

The Continuously Operating Caribbean Observational Network (COCONet) is a collaborative project to create an international network of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations in the Caribbean for natural hazards research. Participating institutions from the U.S. include UNAVCO, UCAR, Purdue University, and the University of Houston. Atmospheric data products generated from COCONet include estimates of column integrated tropospheric water vapor, precipitation, as well as measurements of surface temperature, relative humidity, pressure, and horizontal winds. COCONet observations are expected to be useful in studying water vapor variability in the Caribbean region related to ocean-atmosphere coupling, transport of moisture, and precipitation. Better observations are critical for improved initialization of numerical weather prediction systems and to assess model skill related to precipitation and latent heat transport. Errors in analyses of atmospheric moisture and in seasonal forecasts are anomalously high in the Caribbean region, suggesting that current models do not properly capture the essential atmospheric physics of the region and that the low spatial density of data used to condition these models may also be a problem. This presentation will summarize the overall quality of COCONet atmospheric observations and provide an initial assessment of regional moisture variability in the Caribbean.