MET

Who knows when (approximately) the Nottingham/Watnall sounding station started to use the Vaisala sonde RS80 and may be also which sonde they used before? Thank you!

Does anyone of you know if sea surface temperatures can be obtained for a certain place on earth via the Internet? I'm looking for something like the www.wunderground.com page where meteorological data can be obtained worldwide, this also for days in the past. At the moment the water temperatures of the Marmara sea for certain days since June of last year are of interest. Thank you.

Thank you BrickFielder for indicating this paper. Unfortunately it doesn't help to solve my problem of estimating the water content from *surface* data. It's only by exception that also data at higher levels are available, like e.g. the above mentioned soundings from Manaus which I used for checking the estimation procedure. As you indicated, estimating the water content from surface data requires that some assumptions are made, like e.g. the scale height of 1.5 km. Any ideas on how this scale height could be estimated (instead of assuming a fixed value) with the available surface data (temperature, dew point temperature, pressure and relative humidity)? Is there e.g. a relationship/approximation between the height of the LCL (which can be estimated from surface and dew point temperatures) and the scale height?

With the help of Google I found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifted_condensation_level how the height of the lifted condensation level can be estimated with the difference between surface temperature and dew point temperature. I thought that this height would give a better estimate than 1.5 km scale height. Using the sounding data of Manaus (see above link) the LCL height would be about half of the water vapour scale height (1.5km) whereas the precipitable water content from the sounding suggests that the scale height should be twice the 1.5 km. At this point I'm a bit lost. I would therefore very much appreciate if someone could indicate how the water vapour content can be estimated from surface data such as, temperature, dew point temperature, pressure (sea level or surface) and relative humidity. Thanks for your help.

Edit 1: I don't know how the "Lifted Condensation Level" is calculated. Would it be possible to do it with the available data (Wunderground)?

No. It looks like I have to explain a bit more on what I intend to do. If I understand you correct you refer with the "Lifted Condensation Level" to the data provided from the soundings. For this analysis I actually can not use the sounding data. Too many locations considered in the analysis are not sounding locations. The only data available are those which can be obtained from e.g. Wunderground, i.e. Temperature, Dew Point Temperature, sea level Pressure, Relative Humidity, Wind etc. The data for the Water Content is not provided and has therefore to be estimated from the available data. It's therefore those data (Wunderground) which I used for estimating the Water Content with the suggested formula. Could it be that the assumed height of the column of 1.5km may vary so much that the result for Manaus differs by a factor of 2?

Hello I would like to calculate the precipitable water content from the known relative humidity. I tried to do this as proposed on the first page of this document http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/...238/memo238.pdf However, for locations with very high water content I obtain a difference of about a factor 2. One of those locations is Manaus (Brazil). Looking at their sounding data of the first days in May (2006): http://weather.uwyo.edu/cgi-bin/sounding?r...&STNM=82332 indicate a water content of about 60mm (see last line of a sounding report). Using the above suggested equation provides only values of about 30mm. I checked my calculations several times and they seem to be ok. Also the equations seem to be ok (or I made the same mistake as they did). Where is here the problem, or, how could the precipitable water content be better calculated from relative humidity? Thank you for your help! Regards MET

That's also what I would have guessed. But sorry, from what I found so far no! After having had a look at various places this seems not to be the case. Places like Erzurum in Turkey (19C) or Ulaanbaator in Mongolia (18C), both have higher ranges around the automn equinox than places in the Sahara or the US deserts. May be someone here in the forum may know if such places are listed somewhere. Thanks for the help.

Hello Which places on the globe are record holders for having normally very large diurnal temperature ranges (DTR) and during which part of the year? I'm looking for places with maximal values of the mean DTR (not the DTR from mean maximal tempterature minus mean minimal temperature). Thank you for your hints. Best regards MET