It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

website listing atmospheric humidity at different levels?

page: 1
1

log in

join
share:

posted on Nov, 20 2011 @ 05:18 PM
link   
i've been doing a bit of research and i just can not find what i'm looking for.
checked noaa and nasa and a few other durring searches.
may have missed it completely due to search term or some such reason.
my question being, if the stripes across the sky, like here in new mexico all this past week, are only extended vapor trails, then i want proof.
the usual explanation is that the layer the jet is flying in is high humidity, so the contrails last.
hence, stripes in the sky here in the desert.
is there a site, can somebody point me in the right direction?
i want to see for myself, 20% humidity on the ground, then the various layers up to and beyond the 30-40 thousand feet most passenger jets fly.
thanx in advance.



posted on Nov, 20 2011 @ 05:20 PM
link   
reply to post by rubbertramp
 


I'm sure Phage can answer that for you. I'd U2U him, or wait for him to find your thread.



posted on Nov, 20 2011 @ 05:33 PM
link   
reply to post by this_is_who_we_are
 


thanx, i'll u2u him the thread.



posted on Nov, 20 2011 @ 05:35 PM
link   
reply to post by rubbertramp
 


This is one source:

weather.uwyo.edu...

If you contact some of our resident meteorologists, they may know of others, with more specific information.

And, since you're in New Mexico, here is the data for Albuquerque:

weather.uwyo.edu...



edit on Sun 20 November 2011 by ProudBird because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 20 2011 @ 06:01 PM
link   
Individual sounding unfortunately don't tell you very much, as they just give a pinpoint sample in a highly variable field of values. The best source of info is the NASA contrail forecast, which uses the same data that is used for weather forecasting. See here:

www-angler.larc.nasa.gov...

And even that's not going to be 100% accurate. It's essentially a weather forecast, which as you know is often wrong.


Because they are based on a sparse number of actual in situ (balloon sonde) data taken every 12 hours and satellite measurements, the RUC data are not a perfect representation of the various meteorological parameters, especially water vapor. The model humidity at upper levels of the atmosphere is often too low, reflecting the current biases known to exist in our measurement system.



posted on Nov, 21 2011 @ 03:44 AM
link   
reply to post by ProudBird
 


That is excellent Proudbird, thank you. I can even get soundings from only a few miles up the road from me, those figures are radically different from where the OP is, though

edit on 21-11-2011 by waynos because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 22 2011 @ 04:41 PM
link   
UK soundings can be found here - www.btinternet.com...

With the same caveats as apply to any other soundings - they are just snapshots of one small part of the sky.



posted on Nov, 22 2011 @ 04:52 PM
link   
The upper air soundings are made with radiosondes, instrument packages attached to balloons. As pointed out this makes them quite limited in usefulness. Not only is a very limited horizontal section sampled (the area the balloon rises through) but the vertical resolution is variable, sometimes missing many hundreds of feet between samples. The soundings are also only made twice a day, the weather can change a lot in 12 hours.

So, for predicting contrail formation the soundings can be pretty unreliable. But for getting an idea of how different the conditions can be at various levels they are invaluable.
edit on 11/22/2011 by Phage because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 22 2011 @ 07:02 PM
link   
reply to post by Phage
 


Phage, I've also found that the soundings in some locations give nonsensical results, unless I'm doing something wrong.

I wrote a data-mining script to calculate the number of days that had >70% humidy and



posted on Nov, 22 2011 @ 07:39 PM
link   
reply to post by Uncinus
 

Instrumentation could be a factor. There is a known "dry bias" with at least some instruments. I'm not sure it would account for what you've found though.
www.arm.gov...

I wonder if that vertical resolution I mentioned might have something to do with it. I know at some stations it's worse than others at times. As you know, saturated layers can be pretty thin.

Not really relevant to your question but that 70% figure is a bit misleading. Contrail formation requires saturation (at least) with respect to ice. The RH values from radiosondes is in respect to water. 70% RHw is an approximation, 100% RHi can occur (I believe) at as low as 60% RHw. It's tricky to derive one from the other though.

edit on 11/22/2011 by Phage because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 22 2011 @ 10:46 PM
link   
reply to post by Phage
 


Yeah, those equations are a little too long for me (Goff-Gratch?). I'd like to make a calculator sometime though. One should at least be able to have a table of 100% RHI in terms of percentage of RH for Temp and Pressure, no?
edit on 22-11-2011 by Uncinus because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 22 2011 @ 11:27 PM
link   
Reducing 100% RHI to 60% RHw still only gives 8 contrail days at Medford, OR. Hmm, needs some looking into.



posted on Nov, 23 2011 @ 11:14 AM
link   
How to convert RHw to RHi



Source: www.esrl.noaa.gov...



posted on Nov, 23 2011 @ 11:55 AM
link   
So I implemented that in Ruby as:

e_sat_w_Ta = (1.0007 + 0.00000346 * p)*6.1121*Math.exp((17.966*ta)/(247.15+ta));
e_sat_i_Ta = (1.0003 + 0.00000418 * p)*6.1115*Math.exp((22.452*ta)/(272.55+ta));
rhi = rh * (e_sat_w_Ta/e_sat_i_Ta);


And the test is now rhi>=100 && temp



posted on Nov, 23 2011 @ 12:01 PM
link   
thanx for the replies and links.
man, i'm even more ignorant to this topic than i thought.
lots to read and study.
as of now some of what has been posted is like reading another language.




top topics



 
1

log in

join