The GEWEX Water Vapor Assessment archive of water vapour products from satellite observations and reanalyses.

The Global Energy and Water cycle Exchanges (GEWEX) Data and Assessments Panel (GDAP) initiated the GEWEX Water Vapor Assessment (G-VAP), which has the main objectives to quantify the current state of art in water vapour products being constructed for climate applications and to support the selection process of suitable water vapour products by GDAP for its production of globally consistent water and energy cycle products. During the construction of the G-VAP data archive, freely available and mature satellite and reanalysis data records with a minimum temporal coverage of 10 years were considered. The archive contains total column water vapour (TCWV) as well as specific humidity and temperature at four pressure levels (1000, 700, 500, 300 hPa) from 22 different data records.

Increases in tropical rainfall driven by changes in frequency of organized deep convection.

Increasing global precipitation has been associated with a warming climate resulting from a strengthening of the hydrological cycle. This increase, however, is not spatially uniform. Observations and models have found that changes in rainfall show patterns characterized as 'wet-gets-wetter' and 'warmer-gets-wetter'.

Long-term satellite record reveals likely recent aerosol trend.

Analysis of the long-term Global Aerosol Climatology Project data set reveals a likely decrease of the global optical thickness of tropospheric aerosols by as much as 0.03 during the period from 1991 to 2005. This recent trend mirrors the concurrent global increase in solar radiation fluxes at Earth's surface and may have contributed to recent changes in surface climate.