Understanding boreal summer UTLS water vapor variations in monsoon regions: a Lagrangian perspective

Abstract. Water vapor in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere plays a crucial role for climate, affecting radiation, chemistry, and atmospheric dynamics. This study applies a simplified Lagrangian method to reconstruct stratospheric water vapor based on satellite observations from the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment III on the International Space Station (SAGE III/ISS) and the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS). The objective is to improve understanding of moisture enhancements in the Asian and North American monsoons and to identify the key factors contributing to reconstruction biases. The performance of Lagrangian reconstructions significantly improves with the size of trajectory ensembles but exhibits a general dry bias. The reconstruction represents the summertime local water vapor maximum well in the Asian monsoon, particularly above the tropopause, but not in the North American monsoon. The main dehydration region diagnosed from trajectories indicates that water vapor in the Asian monsoon is predominantly controlled by local tropopause temperatures. The dry bias in reconstructions below the tropopause over the Asian monsoon shows a positive correlation with convection intensity, particularly in the western part of the monsoon region, suggesting that underestimated moistening from convection may contribute to this bias. Water vapor mixing ratios in the North American monsoon are largely influenced by long-range transport from dehydrated regions over southern Asia and additional local moistening. The limited performance of reconstructions in the North American monsoon is therefore likely linked to underestimation of local convection or uncertainties in long-range transport.