The interaction of the atmosphere with near-IR solar (short-wave) radiation is dominated by water vapour absorption. Understanding and characterising the amount and wavelength-dependence of absorption by water vapour and other atmospheric species is essential for climate studies. Model calculations of radiative transfer in the Earth's atmosphere rely on molecular spectral lines databases such as HITRAN to provide information about the spectral properties of molecules present in the atmosphere.

The parameters are derived from laboratory measurements on pure water vapour and mixtures of water vapour and air. The measurements were made at the Molecular Spectroscopy Facility of STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The line fitting was carried out by the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading.

The files contain data in HITRAN format, and more details about the format and documentation can be found at their web site. HITRAN is an acronym for high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database.

This dataset is now public. Please acknowledge the source of the data in any publication.

Data are stored in the BADC CWVC HITRAN project data archive.

The data are in hitran format.

Documentation for the HITRAN water vapour absorption dataset can be found in the BADC CWVC doc area.

Links to Furhter Information:

• Help on HITRAN
• Help on the HITRAN database
• Help on Molecular Spectroscopy Facility at CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

If you have queries about these pages or about obtaining the CWVC-HITRAN data from the BADC then you should contact BADC Support. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the BADC support will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible, and in any case, the user will be kept informed of progress.

• The CWVC Programme Science Co-ordinator was Dr Keith Bower (UMIST, Manchester).
• The CWVC Programme Administrator was Dr Sally Palmer (NERC, Swindon).
• Dr Kevin Smith (RAL) supplied the dataset.