GPS-Based Precipitable Water Vapor Data for Oregon

Encompassing GPS-based measurements of Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) collected through a partnership between the University of Oregon and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It is intended to complement existing resource assessment data for wind and solar energy applications.

Use Cases

• Analyze Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV) trends to assess atmospheric moisture for meteorological modeling.
• Correlate PWV measurements with solar energy resource data to model atmospheric attenuation effects.
• Integrate PWV data with wind energy resource assessments to study humidity impacts on turbine performance.
• Use PWV measurements as a validation source for satellite-derived atmospheric water column products.

Strengths

• Data is provided under a permissive Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license.
• Dataset is associated with a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory (NREL) and a university partnership.
• Tags indicate relevance to multiple energy sectors (Wind Energy, Solar Energy) and meteorological instrumentation.

Limitations

• The specific data structure (columns, rows, file size) is unknown, complicating direct analysis.
• Sample data is unavailable, preventing assessment of data format and quality before access.
• Primary data format is listed as HTML, which is atypical for structured scientific data and may require parsing.

Provenance

Source

University of Oregon and U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Collection Method

Collected via GPS-based instrumentation to measure Precipitable Water Vapor (PWV).

Freshness

Last updated March 21, 2026.

Geography

Oregon, United States (inferred from tags and organization).