Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2025, V. 22, No. 6, pp. 365-379
A study of the summer monsoon near the Hindustan Peninsula in the atmospheric precipitable water vapor field based on satellite microwave radiometer data: Part 1
А.V. Kuzmin
1 , D.M. Ermakov
1, 2 , A.G. Golovko
1 1 Space Research Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia
2 Kotelnikov Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics RAS, Fryazino Branch, Fryazino, Moscow Region, Russia
Accepted: 13.11.2025
DOI: 10.21046/2070-7401-2025-22-6-365-379
The paper presents an analysis of daily precipitable water vapor (PWV) in the summer period of the Indian monsoon for 2012–2021. To obtain PWV, microwave radiometric SSMIS data from the F16–F18 satellites were used. From these data, a database of global daily PWV fields for the period from 2012 to 2023 was created at Space Research Institute RAS. In reconstructing PWV from the SSMIS data, the artificial neural network technology and the satellite radiothermovision approach were used. Thus, daily PWV fields for 2012–2021 were obtained from the radiometric data of F16–F18 SSMIS channels 1–18 with an interval of 3 hours on a coordinate grid of 0.25×0.25°. In the first part of the article, 11 regions around the Hindustan Peninsula are studied. Each region is selected with a size of 5×5°. Six of these areas are located over the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean, and five areas are located on land — in northwest India, at the border with Pakistan and in the north along the Himalayas. As an example, the PWV data for 2016 are presented and analyzed. These PWV data are compared with the total precipitation data taken from the ERA5 reanalysis. The studies have shown that in all the analyzed areas there is a high correlation between the dynamics of the total precipitation and the PWV values. An increase in the PWV occurs before the rainy season from about March until the onset of the monsoon, then the PWV reaches a relatively constant value, a “plateau”, and intense rainfall occurs during this period. Then there is a sharp decrease in the PWV with the end of the rainy season. This consistent change in the PWV can serve as a template for the forecast of the beginning and end of the monsoon in each region. In the second part of the article, we will construct an average template for each region based on the PWV data for 2012–2021.
Keywords: global fields of precipitable water vapor, Indian summer monsoon, microwave radiometry, satellite radiothermovision
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