New studies of the visible and near‐infrared absorption by water vapour and some problems with the HITRAN database

New laboratory measurements and theoretical calculations of integrated line intensities for water vapour bands in the near‐infrared and visible (8500–15800 cm −1 ) are summarised. Band intensities derived from the new measured data show a systematic 6 to 26% increase compared to calculations using the HITRAN‐96 database. The recent corrections to the HITRAN database [ Giver et al., J. Quant. Spectrosc. Radiat. Transfer, 66 , 101–105, 2000] do not remove these discrepancies and the differences change to 6 to 38%. The new data is expected to substantially increase the calculated absorption of solar energy due to water vapour in climate models based on the HITRAN database.