ALBERT

Description: Dispersion of backward air parcel trajectories that are initially tightly grouped near the tropical tropopause is examined using three ensemble approaches: ‘RANWIND’, in which different ensemble members use identical resolved wind fluctuations but different realizations of stochastic, multi-fractal simulations of unresolved winds, ‘PERTLOC’, in which members use identical resolved wind fields but initial locations are perturbed 2° in latitude and longitude, and a multi-model ensemble (‘MULTIMODEL’) that uses identical initial conditions but different resolved wind fields and/or trajectory formulations. Comparisons among the approaches distinguish, to some degree, physical dispersion from that due to data uncertainty and the impacts of unresolved wind fluctuations from those of resolved variability. Dispersion rates are robust properties of trajectories near the tropical tropopause. Horizontal dispersion rates are typically ~3°/day, which is large enough to spread parcels throughout the tropics within typical tropical tropopause layer transport times (30 – 60 days) and underscores the importance of averaging large collections of trajectories to obtain reliable parcel source and pathway distributions. Vertical dispersion rates away from convection are ~2-3 hPa/day. Dispersion is primarily carried out by the resolved flow and the RANWIND approach provides a plausible representation of actual trajectory dispersion rates, while PERTLOC provides a reasonable and inexpensive alternative to RANWIND. In contrast, dispersion from the MULTIMODEL calculations is important because it reflects systematic differences in resolved wind fields from different reanalysis data sets.

Description: Winter-summer differences in the transport of air from the boundary layer to the lower stratosphere at low latitudes are investigated with ensembles of back trajectory calculations that track parcels from the 380 K isentropic surface to their convective detrainment in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) during the winter of 2006–2007 and summer of 2007. Horizontal displacements for the trajectories are calculated from reanalysis data; potential temperature displacements are calculated from radiative heating rates derived from observed cloud, water vapor, ozone, and temperature variations; and the locations' convective detrainments are determined by satellite observations of convective clouds. Weaker upwelling in the TTL during boreal summer compared with that of winter both slows the ascent through the TTL and raises the height threshold that convective detrainment must surpass in order for ascent to occur, restricting the injection of new air into the stratosphere during summer. In addition, anticyclonic circulations associated with convective activity contribute to vertical transport in the TTL by guiding detrained air parcels through regions with the strongest upwelling. These features combine to make monsoon-related convection over the Indian subcontinent the dominant source of new air during summer. In contrast, winter sources are spread over the southern continents and the western Pacific Ocean. These seasonal differences imply that air entering the tropical stratosphere during summer is older but might nevertheless be more polluted than air entering during winter. While poor data sampling in the TTL makes it difficult to validate our results, they are bolstered by favorable comparisons with previous studies of the TTL, by sensitivity tests that reveal important dynamical influences on surface-to-stratospheric transport, and by the robustness of dynamical interactions that systematically associate deep convection with anticyclonic circulations and strong radiative heating in the TTL. Sensitivity experiments suggest that the aforementioned seasonal differences are sensitive to strong “large-scale” (on global space scales and seasonal time scales) perturbations. In particular, uncertainties in the vertical motion fields constrain our ability to draw definitive conclusions. However, trajectory statistics are not sensitive to small-scale perturbations, with the encouraging implication that our results are primarily associated with those features of the circulation that are the most likely to be robust.

Description: [1]  We explore the use of nonlinear empirical predictions of thin cirrus for diagnosing transport through the Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL). Thirty day back trajectories are calculated from the locations of CALIPSO cloud observations to obtain Lagrangian dry and cold points associated with each observation. These historical values are combined with ‘local’ (at the location of the CALIPSO observation) temperature and specific humidity to predict cloud probability using multivariate polynomial regression. We demonstrate that our statistical sample (7 seasons) is sufficient to retrieve the full nonlinear relationship between cloud probability and its predictors and that substantial information is lost in a purely linear analysis. The best cloud prediction is obtained by the two-variable combination of local temperature and humidity, which reflects the close relationship between clouds and relative humidity. However, single variable predictions involving air parcel histories are better than those based solely on the individual local fields, indicating the existence of reliable dynamical information content within parcel trajectories. Thermal fields are better cirrus predictors during boreal winter than summer primarily due to poor predictions over the Asian summer monsoon region, revealing that the functional relationship over southern Asia differs from the rest of the tropics; in short, TTL cirrus formation over regions of active maritime convection, such as the west Pacific, is thermally dominated, indicating an environment in which in situ cirrus are readily formed, while TTL cirrus of southern Asia is moisture dominated, indicating a more direct connection between convective injection of moisture and thin cirrus.