What is meant by the expression, “high-altitude water vapor”? I use these words in almost every climate letterday as if they formed a real term having a special and well-accepted definition. In fact the term itself is real, having a broad definition that anyone can understand, but that is not how I use it, which leaves me very unhappy. I want to find a good replacement. I started using the current one a few months back as a replacement for “high-flying water vapor,” which also didn’t work even though it again was true in a broad sense. While once more searching for a better term, today I want to set forth a renewed definition of its intended meaning as clearly as possible. For at least this one day lets just call the stuff ESWV, signifying there is something truly “extra special” about this vapor.
In the first place, I can think of no better way to describe ESWV than through the use of imagery, and for that purpose there is no better source than the animated website of Total Precipitable Water produced at the University of Wisconsin. So please open it at http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php and be ready to spend some time making a close examination of whatever things you see going on there. In my estimation ESWV makes up only a small fraction of all the material that is represented, probably less than 10%. Its location can be identified but never the specific amount at any particular location. That’s because it is always included as part of the total amount of precipitable water in any vertical column of atmosphere, stated in terms of weight per square meter, as measured for all locations. ESWV, when present, will generally constitute a large fraction of the total local amount, but it presumably has no presence whatsoever in many planetary regions having the highest measurements.
ESWV locations depend to some extent on the time of year, because of regular seasonal changes in atmospheric conditions. At this time look for it to appear in areas either north of 30 degrees north latitude in the Northern Hemisphere or south of 20S in the Southern. It is identified in large part by activity, which is constantly in motion and generally heading from east to west, with a bias toward the closer pole, on tracks not perfectly straight. It is also identified by common formation into highly visible, well-defined streams, which are at first marked by fairly high concentrations of vapor, as high as 40kg or even higher, then suffering losses during the course of movement and ending up by disintegrating. Streams can stay on roughly the same course for five days or longer and in some cases remain visibly intact over distances measured in thousands of miles, although most fall well short of these outer limits.
This website gives no indication of the altitude of these streams, nor does it show exact locations of where the vapor comes from before forming into streams. These things can only be inferred. In some respects the point of origin does not matter, or make this vapor exceptional, but altitude is a critical consideration. By inference we learn that the active streams we are seeing exist in the same extended-in-depth high altitude as that where jetstream winds are found. These jet winds also happen to regularly move in the same general direction of west to east. Interactions between the two disparate types of streams are both unavoidable and common. They can be observed in actual everyday events, via methods that leave no other reasonable options for explanation. (My letters have been full of examples that can be referred to.)
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ESWV, as here defined, is important because of the unique and powerful effects it has on surface air temperatures whenever batches of it pass overhead. Batches are demonstrably variable in size and relatively brief in duration of passage. Nearly all surface localities in the higher latitudes of both hemispheres, the very same latitudes that have jetstream winds in the skies above, are likely to experience overhead passage of batches of vapor of greater or lesser amount practically every day of the year. You can see this activity in progress through careful observation of the animated website at any time.
Carl