Multiscale Variations of Precipitable Water over China Based on 1999-2015 Ground-Based GPS Observations and Evaluations of Reanalysis Products

The dense ground-based GPS provides a good tool to study water vapor distribution and multiscale variations, especially for linear trends on the interannual scale and short-term variations on the diurnal scale. It can also serve as an independent data source to evaluate performances of reanalyses. In this study, the 6-hourly precipitable water (PW) products at more than 260 GPS stations over China from 1999 to 2015 were analyzed and eight commonly used reanalyses, including 20CR version 2 (20CRv2), CFSR, ERA-Interim, JRA-25, JRA-55, MERRA, NCEP-NCAR, and NCEP-DOE AMIP-II, were evaluated. The climatological annual mean GPS PW distribution over China roughly shows a decreasing trend from southeast to northwest, with the largest annual and semiannual amplitudes in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and mideastern China, respectively, and the smallest values in the Tibetan Plateau and southwestern China. All reanalyses (except for 20CRv2) can generally reproduce well the climatological annual mean PW (within 20%), annual amplitudes (within 20%), and semiannual amplitudes (within 20% except in the tropical monsoon region), but they all show wet biases in the Tibetan Plateau. Diurnal variation amplitudes reproduced by all reanalysis products are smaller than amplitudes estimated from GPS observations over China as a whole, and none of the reanalyses can capture the diurnal phases correctly. PW linear trends at most GPS stations in the recent 16 years are insignificant or with absolute values smaller than 0.10 mm yr(-1). However, because of the assimilation of the unhomogenized radiosonde humidity data, most reanalyses show artificial decreasing PW trends (except in 20CRv2 and CFSR).