Over-Ocean Water Vapor and Liquid Water Climatology from SSM/I

While trends in surface temperature over both land and ocean have been well-monitored over the last several decades, similar knowledge does not exist for water vapor or cloud liquid water. Knowledge of the climatological distribution and trends of these variables are important for both assessing the performance of climate models as well as monitoring global climate change. To this end, we present new results on the over-ocean climatology of water vapor and cloud liquid water based on microwave satellite retrievals from almost two decades of SSM/I data. Trends are seen in the integrated water vapor path that appear consistent with both radiosonde measurements and ocean surface temperature trends.