STARTWAVE

STudies in Atmospheric Radiative Transfer
and Water VApour Effects

Results

During the first phase of the STARTWAVE project (2001 – 2005) we concentrated on validating and analysing radiation and water vapour measurements made in the Alpine region. In the second phase (2005 – 2009) we continued to investigate these data and expanded our study region to include water vapour and radiation data from the whole of Europe:

• Development of instruments for measuring both tropospheric and stratospheric water vapour including
  • > TROWARA
  • > ASMUWARA
  • > MIAWARA
  • > Sun Photometer
• Setting up a database of water vapour and liquid water observations
• Analysis of nine years (1995-2003) of radiation budget measurements from the Alpine Surface Radiation Budget (ASRB) network and detection of radiative forcing caused by increased greenhouse gas concentrations and water vapour feedback. > more information
• Validation of water vapour measurements. > more information
• Comparison of integrated water vapour data from the Swiss GPS network with the ERA40 reanalysis. > more information
• Development of an altitude correction for IWV data from the Swiss GPS network. > more information