ALBERT

Description: Remote sensing measurements from the Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescope for the Atmosphere – New Frontiers (CRISTA-NF) during a flight on 29 July 2006 are presented. This flight is part of the AMMA-SCOUT-O3 measurement campaign, where CRISTA-NF was deployed on the high-flying research aircraft M55-Geophysica. The flight path was located over Italy and the Mediterranean Sea and crossed over the subtropical jet twice. Measurements of temperature, and the volume mixing ratios of water vapor (H2O), ozone (O3), nitric acid (HNO3) and peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) are available with a vertical resolution of up to 500 m between about 6 to 21 km altitude. CRISTA-NF observes these trace gases simultaneously and provides a quasi-2-D view of the transition region between the troposphere and the stratosphere. The observation of these different trace gases allows to determine tropospheric and stratospheric air masses. As expected, higher abundances are found where the main source of the trace gases is located: in the stratosphere for O3 and in the troposphere for H2O and PAN. Tracer-tracer correlations between O3 and PAN are used to identify the mixed tropospheric and lowermost stratospheric air at the subtropical jet and around the thermal tropopause north of the jet. An intrusion of stratospheric air into the troposphere associated with the subtropical jet is found in the CRISTA-NF observations. The observations indicate that the intrusion is connected to a tropopause fold which is not resolved in the ECMWF analysis data. The intrusion was reproduced in a simulation with the Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS). The CLaMS simulation shows, that the lowermost stratospheric air masses in the intrusion where transported along the the subtropical jet. The tropospheric air masses around the intrusion originate from the vicinity of the Asian monsoon anticyclone. This work discusses the nature of the observed processes at the subtropical jet based on the CRISTA-NF observations and the CLaMS simulation.

Description: Kelvin waves excited by tropospheric convection are considered to be one of the main drivers of the stratospheric quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO). In this paper we combine several measured data sets with the Gravity wave Regional Or Global RAy Tracer (GROGRAT) in order to study the forcing and vertical propagation of Kelvin waves. Launch distributions for the ray tracer at tropospheric altitudes are deduced from space-time spectra of European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses, as well as outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) and rainfall data measured by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite. The resulting stratospheric Kelvin wave spectra are compared to ECMWF operational analyses and temperature measurements of the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) satellite instrument. Questions addressed are: the relative importance of source variability versus wind modulation, the relative importance of radiative and turbulent damping versus wave breaking, and the minimum altitude where freely propagating waves dominate the spectrum.

Description: Equatorial planetary scale wave modes such as Kelvin waves or Rossby-gravity waves are excited by convective processes in the troposphere. In this paper an analysis for these and other equatorial wave modes is carried out with special focus on the stratosphere using temperature data from the SABER satellite instrument as well as ECMWF temperatures. Space-time spectra of symmetric and antisymmetric spectral power are derived to separate the different equatorial wave types and the contribution of gravity waves is determined from the spectral background of the space-time spectra. Both gravity waves and equatorial planetary scale wave modes are main drivers of the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) in the stratosphere. Temperature variances attributed to the different wave types are calculated for the period from February 2002 until March 2006 and compared to previous findings. A comparison between SABER and ECMWF wave analyses shows that in the lower stratosphere SABER and ECMWF spectra and temperature variances agree remarkably well while in the upper stratosphere ECMWF tends to overestimate Kelvin wave components. Gravity wave variances are partly reproduced by ECMWF but have a significant low-bias. For the examples of a QBO westerly phase (October–December 2004) and a QBO easterly phase (November/December 2005, period of the SCOUT-O3 tropical aircraft campaign in Darwin/Australia) in the lower stratosphere we find qualitatively good agreement between SABER and ECMWF in the longitude-time distribution of Kelvin, Rossby (n=1), and Rossby-gravity waves.

Description: The quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) of the zonal mean zonal wind is a dynamical phenomenon of the tropical middle atmosphere. Influences of the QBO can even be found at mid and high latitudes. It is widely accepted that the phase descent of alternating tropical easterlies and westerlies is driven by atmospheric waves of both global scale (equatorial wave modes like Kelvin, equatorial Rossby, Rossby-gravity, or inertia-gravity waves), as well as mesoscale gravity waves. However, the relative distribution of the different types of waves to the forcing of the QBO winds is highly uncertain. This is the case because until recently there were no high resolution long-term global measurements in the stratosphere. In our study we estimate Kelvin wave momentum flux and the contribution of zonal wind forcing by Kelvin waves based on space-time spectra determined from both Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) temperature measurements as well as temperatures from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) operational analyses. Peak values of total Kelvin wave zonal wind forcing found are about 0.2 m/s/day. There is good agreement between SABER and ECMWF results. Altitude-time cross sections are shown and the results are compared to the total wave forcing required to balance the background atmosphere. Sometimes Kelvin wave forcing is sufficient to explain almost the whole total wave forcing required for the momentum balance during the transition from QBO easterly to westerly winds. This is especially the case during the periods of strong westerly wind shear when the zonal wind is between −20 and 10 m/s at the equator in the altitude range 20 to 35 km. During other parts of the phases of strong westerly wind shear, however, the contribution of Kelvin waves can be comparably low and the missing wave forcing, which is often attributed to mesoscale gravity waves or intermediate scale waves, can be the by far dominant contribution of the QBO forcing. It is also found that seasonal variations of Kelvin wave accelerations could play an important role for the maintenance of the QBO westerly wind jets in the lower stratosphere.

Description: For a case study of Typhoon Ewiniar performed with a mesoscale model, we compare stratospheric gravity wave (GW) momentum flux determined from temperature variances by applying GW polarization relations and by assuming upward propagating waves, with GW momentum flux calculated from model winds which is considered as a reference. The temperature-based momentum-flux profile exhibits positive biases relative to the reference, which fluctuate significantly with altitude. The vertically-averaged magnitude of the positive biases is about 14% of the reference momentum flux. We found that this deviation from the reference stems from the interference between upward and downward propagating waves. The downward propagating GWs are due mainly to partial reflections of upward propagating waves at altitudes where the background wind and stability change with height. When the upward and downward propagating waves are decomposed and their momentum fluxes are calculated separately from temperature perturbations, the fraction of the momentum flux arising from the downward propagating waves is about 4.5–8.2% of that from the upward propagating waves. The net momentum flux of upward and downward propagating GWs agrees well with the reference from the model wind perturbations. The implications of this study for the GW momentum-flux observations from satellites are discussed.

Description: The Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere (GLORIA), a Fourier transform spectrometer based limb spectral imager, operates on high-altitude research aircraft to study the transit region between the troposphere and the stratosphere. It is one of the most sophisticated systems to be flown on research aircraft in Europe, requiring constant monitoring and human intervention in addition to an automation system. To ensure proper functionality and interoperability on multiple platforms, a flexible control and communication system was laid out. The architectures of the communication system as well as the protocols used are reviewed. The integration of this architecture in the automation process as well as the scientific campaign flight application context are discussed.

Description: In order to incorporate the effect of gravity waves (GWs) on the atmospheric circulation most global circulation models (GCMs) employ gravity wave parameterization schemes. To date, GW parameterization schemes in GCMs are used without experimental validation of the set of global parameters assumed for the GW launch spectrum. This paper focuses on the Warner and McIntyre GW parameterization scheme. Ranges of parameters compatible with absolute values of gravity wave momentum flux (GW-MF) derived from CRISTA-1 and CRISTA-2 satellite measurements are deduced for several of the parameters and the limitations of both model and measurements are discussed. The findings presented in this paper show that the initial guess of spectral parameters provided by by Warner and McIntyre (2001) are some kind of compromise with respect to agreement of absolute values and agreement of the horizontal structures found in both measurements and model results. Better agreement can be achieved by using a vertical wavenumber launch spectrum with a wider saturated spectral range and reduced spectral power in the unsaturated part. However, even with this optimized set of global launch parameters not all features of the measurements are matched. This indicates that for further improvement spatial and seasonal variations of the launch parameters should be included in GW parameterization schemes.

Description: Global model data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are analyzed for resolved gravity waves (GWs). Based on fitted 3-D wave vectors of individual waves and using the ECMWF global scale background fields, backward ray tracing from 25 km altitude is performed. Different sources such as orography, convection and winter storms are identified. It is found that due to oblique propagation waves spread widely from narrow source regions. Gravity waves which originate from regions of strong convection are frequently excited around the tropopause and have in the ECMWF model low phase and group velocities as well as very long horizontal wavelengths compared to other models and to measurements. While the total amount of momentum flux for convective GWs changes little over season, GWs generated by storms and mountain waves show large day-to-day variability, which has a strong influence also on total hemispheric fluxes; from one day to the next the total hemispheric flux may increase by a factor of 3. Implications of these results for using the ECMWF model in predicting, analyzing and interpreting global GW distributions as well as implications for seamless climate prediction are discussed.

Description: Remote sensing measurements from the Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescope for the Atmosphere – New Frontiers (CRISTA-NF) during a flight on 29 July 2006 are presented. This flight is part of the AMMA-SCOUT-O3 measurement campaign, where CRISTA-NF was deployed on the high-flying research aircraft M55-Geophysica. The flight path was located over Italy and the Mediterranean Sea and crossed over the subtropical jet twice. Measurements of temperature, and the volume mixing ratios of water vapor (H2O), ozone (O3), nitric acid (HNO3) and peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) are available with a vertical resolution of up to 500 m between about 6 to 21 km altitude. CRISTA-NF observes these trace gases simultaneously and provides a quasi-2D view of the transition region between the troposphere and the stratosphere. The observation of these different trace gases allows to determine the origin of air masses in the stratosphere or troposphere. As expected, higher abundances are found where the main source of the trace gases is located: in the stratosphere for O3 and in the troposphere for H2O and PAN. Tracer-tracer correlations between O3 and PAN are used to identify mixed tropospheric and lowermost stratospheric air at the subtropical jet and around the thermal tropopause north of the jet. An intrusion of stratospheric air into the troposphere associated with the subtropical jet is found in the CRISTA-NF observations. The observations indicate that the intrusion is connected to a tropopause fold which is not resolved in the ECMWF analysis data. The intrusion was reproduced in a simulation with the Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS). This work discusses the nature of the observed processes at the subtropical jet based on the CRISTA-NF observations and the CLaMS simulation.

Description: GLORIA (Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere) is a new remote sensing instrument essentially combining a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer with two two-dimensional (2-D) detector arrays in combination with a highly flexible gimbal mount. It will be housed in the belly pod of the German research aircraft HALO (High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft). It is unique in its high spatial and spectral resolution. Furthermore, the horizontal view angle with respect to the aircraft can be varied from 45° to 135°. This allows for tomographic measurements of mesoscale events for a wide variety of atmospheric constituents. In this paper, a fast tomographic retrieval scheme is presented, which is able to fully exploit the high-resolution radiance observations of the GLORIA limb sounder. The algorithm is optimized for massive 3-D retrievals of several hundred thousands of measurements and atmospheric constituents on common hardware. The new scheme is used to explore the capabilities of GLORIA to sound the atmosphere in full 3-D with respect to the choice of the flightpath and to different measurement modes of the instrument using ozone as a test species. It is demonstrated that the achievable resolution should approach 200 m vertically and 20 km–30 km horizontally. Finally, a comparison of the 3-D inversion with conventional 1-D inversions using the assumption of a horizontally homogeneous atmosphere is performed.