Satellite-based identification of tropopause folding signatures along air mass boundaries.

摘要

Tropopause folding is a significant though frequently underestimated source of mass exchange between the stratosphere and the troposphere. Although tropopause folds are inherently three-dimensional phenomena, empirical evidence shows that certain signature features in two-dimensional satellite products that are sensitive to tropopause height can be used to infer the vertical layering that characterizes tropopause folds. Both Altered Water Vapor (AWV) imagery and Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) total ozone reveal significant gradients at the “openings” of tropopause folds, and the direction of the gradient indicates the direction of the intrusion. This is demonstrated empirically with a comparison of the satellite imagery to a data set of aircraft-based ozone lidar transects from the Tropospheric Ozone Production about the Spring Equinox (TOPSE) experiment. Using the data set to optimize the parameters of this empirical relationship, a statistical model is developed to predict the location of tropopause folds based solely on the properties of AWV imagery, which operates on a hemispheric-scale domain and at the approximately 10-km resolution of the GOES water vapor channel. Validation of this model with evidence of tropopause folding from operational radiosonde data was only partially successful; the validation was not reliable enough to provide precise confirmation of the model parameter values, but it did provide some confirmation that the model was well calibrated. Application of this model over a February to May, 2000 time period provides a four-month “climatology” of tropopause folding activity around North America. During this time period, tropopause folding activity was strongest over the northeast Pacific and northwest Atlantic, and at a minimum in the high latitudes around Hudson Bay. Over the entire domain (25–63° N, 40–165° W), tropopause folding activity was greatest in March. This result does not prove that downward vertical transport from the stratosphere dominates over photochemistry to create the springtime maximum of ozone in the extratropical troposphere in the Northern Hemisphere. However, it does challenge recent results from chemical transport models that downplay the relative contribution of vertical transport of stratospheric ozone to this trend.