In an effort to assess the information content of spaceborne data wavenumber spectra of temperature, moisture, and cloud liquid water are calculated from high-resolution infrared sounder (HIRS), as archived in the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project - TIROS-N operational vertical sounder (ISCCP-TOVS) data set and special sensor microwave/imager (SSM/I) observations. The region under consideration is the southern hemisphere storm track, defined as the region extending from 38¿ to 58¿S. The observational period is July 1989. In general, we find that the ISCCP-TOVS temperature spectrum has two distinct regimes, one where it follows a m-3, and one where it follows m-5/3 power law. These results are consistent with theoretical results for enstrophy and inverse energy cascade respectively in two-dimensional turbulence. The ISCCP-TOVS specific humidity spectra are more difficult to interpret. There is some indication that especially for layers near the surface, these spectra have two regimes similar to the temperature spectra, but this is not unambiguous. For layers in the upper troposphere or lower stratosphere, the m-3 regime is not visible. The spatial variance and the shape of the columnar water vapor spectrum derived from these two sources are very similar. Some differences exist, at high wavenumber domain, but this could be the result of the employed method to construct the SSM/I daily mean distribution. Finally, there is some indication that the cloud liquid water spectrum follows the theoretical spectrum for the diffusion of a passive admixture in two-dimensional turbulence. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1994