Why Water Vapor?
• See work of the USWRP Prospectus Development Teams. • Water vapor is poorly measured and under sampled. • Strong dependence of convective initiation and storms structure/intensity on accurate estimates of water vapor. • Recent mesoscale data assimilation studies seem to indicate that a direct measurement of the vertical profile of water vapor may be necessary (e.g., Guo et al. 1999). This finding is different from temperature and winds where the temperature predictions are improved assimilating wind profiler measurements. There is no general balance constraint for humidity. • We acknowledge the potential improvement in QPF from other avenues (data assimilation and general model improvements).
