2025AJ....169..165B

This work aims at providing fundamental general tools for the analysis of water spectra as observed in protoplanetary disks with JWST-MIRI. We analyze 25 high-quality spectra from the JDISC Survey reduced with asteroid calibrators as presented in K. M. Pontoppidan et al. (2024). First, we present a spectral atlas to illustrate the clustering of H₂O transitions from different upper-level energies (E_u) and identify single (unblended) transitions that provide the most reliable measurements. With that, we demonstrate two important excitation effects: the opacity saturation of ortho-para line pairs that overlap, and the subthermal excitation of excitation of v = 1-1 lines scattered across the v = 0-0 rotational band. Second, we define a shorter list of fundamental lines spanning E_u = 1500-6000 K to develop simple line-ratio diagnostic diagrams for the radial temperature distribution of water in inner disks, which are interpreted using discrete temperature components and power-law radial gradients. Third, we report the detection of disk-rotation Doppler broadening of molecular lines, which confirms the radial distribution of water emission including, for the first time, the radially extended ≈170-220 K reservoir close to the snowline. The combination of measured line ratios and broadening suggests that drift-dominated disks have shallower temperature gradients with an extended cooler disk surface enriched by ice sublimation. We also report the first detection of an H₂O-rich inner disk wind from narrow blueshifted absorption in the ro-vibrational lines. We summarize these findings and tools into a general recipe to make the study of water in planet-forming regions reliable, effective, and sustainable for samples of >100 disks.