Knowledge of the distribution of tropospheric moisture, both temporal and spatial, has been pointed out to be crucial in the effort to understand the tropical atmosphere.
In this study we focus on mid-level moisture and its relationship to upper level cloudiness, which is a surrogate for convection. We use in-situ data collected during ferry flights of the Electra aircraft within the intensive operation period of TOGA COARE to assess the moisture behavior at mid level. Infrared brightness temperature from the GMS-4 Japanese Satellite was used to obtain the characteristics of the cloudiness in the region close to the Electra track. We used both relative humidity and the difference between saturated and environmental equivalent potential temperature to represent tropospheric moisture.
Our analysis of the ferry flights shows that at mid-level, horizontal variations of moisture do not have a lot of small scale structure, but take on similar values over wide areas. We also found a relationship between ferry flight moisture and infrared brightness temperature, which may reflect the strong effect of low mid-level humidity on suppressing convection