An assessment of upper troposphere and lower stratosphere water vapor in MERRA, MERRA2, and ECMWF reanalyses using Aura MLS observations

Global water vapor (H2O) measurements from Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) are used to evaluate upper tropospheric (UT) and lower stratospheric (LS) H2O products produced by NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA), its newest release MERRA2, and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Interim Reanalyses. Focusing on the H2O amount and transport from UT to LS, we show that all reanalyses overestimate annual global mean UT H2O by up to similar to 150% compared to MLS observations. Substantial differences in H2O transport are also found between the observations and reanalyses. Vertically, H2O transport across the tropical tropopause (16-20 km) in the reanalyses is faster by up to similar to 86% compared to MLS observations. In the tropical LS (21-25 km), the mean vertical transport from ECMWF is 168% faster than the MLS estimate, while MERRA and MERRA2 have vertical transport velocities within 10% of MLS values. Horizontally at 100 hPa, both observation and reanalyses show faster poleward transport in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) than in the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Compared to MLS observations, the H2O horizontal transport for both MERRA and MERRA2 is 106% faster in the NH but about 42-45% slower in the SH. ECMWF horizontal transport is 16% faster than MLS observations in both hemispheres. The ratio of northward to southward transport velocities for ECMWF is 1.4, which agrees with MLS observation, while the corresponding ratios for MERRA and MERRA2 are about 3.5 times larger.