Abstract
A multiple-parameter model has been formulated to estimate precipitable water profiles above the standard pressure levels from the satellite infrared spectrometer B (SIRS–B) radiation observations taken from the Nimbus 4 satellite. The method was verified with coincident radiosonde data. The relative error of SIRS-derived precipitable water above the 1000-mb level was approximately 20 percent. The 532-cm−1 water vapor channel alone explained 72 percent of the variance of the precipitable water. This method was used to specify the optimum SIRS–B spectral intervals for future water vapor sounding.
