Rigorous determination of stratospheric water vapor trends from MIPAS observations

The trend of stratospheric water vapor as a function of latitude is estimated by the MIPAS measurements by means of a new method that uses the measurement space solution. The method uses all the information provided by the observations avoiding the artifacts introduced by the a priori information and by the interpolation to different vertical grids. The analysis provides very precise values of the trends that, however, are limited by a relatively large systematic error induced by the radiometric calibration error of the instrument. The results show in the five years from 2005 to 2009 a dependence on latitude of the stratospheric (from 37 to 53 km) water vapor trend with a positive value of (0.41 ± 0.16)%yr−1 in the northern hemisphere and less than 0.16%yr−1 in the southern hemisphere.