Moisture correspondence between lower and upper troposphere over oceans using AIRS observations

This study uses AIRS moisture profile data to reveal geographical correspondences of atmospheric moisture content between the lower and upper troposphere. The daily gridded AIRS atmospheric specific humidity over world oceans between 50šS to 50šN are used to derive three-day average vertical integrated moisture content for the two air columns: 1000mb-500mb and 500mb-100mb for the available three years time period. Then singular value decomposition analysis (SVD) is performed to identify the teleconnections among grids between these two atmospheric layers. In addition, the time series of the resulting major SVD patterns are analyzed to reveal the dominant mode of temporal variations ranging from weekly to interannual time scales.