Improvement of the NVAP Global Water Vapor Data Set for Climate, Hydrological and Weather Studies

The NASA MEaSUREs program began in 2008 and has the goal of creating stable, community accepted Earth System Data Records (ESDRs) for a variety of geophysical time series. A reanalysis and extension of the NASA Water Vapor Project (NVAP), called NVAP-M was performed by Science and Technology Corporation, METSAT Division as part of this program. NVAP-M spans 1988-2009. NVAP-M is further described in Vonder Haar, T. H., J. L. Bytheway and J. M. Forsythe, 2012: "Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations." Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L16802, doi:10.1029/2012GL052094

The heritage NASA Water Vapor Project (NVAP) total column (integrated) water vapor data sets comprised a combination of radiosonde observations, Television and Infrared Operational Satellite (TIROS) Operational Vertical Sounders (TOVS), and Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) data sets. These data sets spanned 14 years (1988 - 2001) and contained total and layered global water vapor data. The spatial coverage was global for all data sets. NVAP-M completely supercedes the heritage NVAP data set.