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Dehydration in the Winter Arctic Tropopause RegionRecent work has shown that limited amounts of tropospheric air can penetrate as much as 1 km into the middleworld stratosphere during the arctic winter. This, coupled with temperatures that are cold enough to produce saturation mixing ratios of less than 5 ppmv at the tropopause, results in stratospheric cloud formation and upper tropospheric dehydration. Even though these "cold outbreaks" occupy only a small portion of the area in the arctic (1-2%), their importance is magnified by an order of magnitude because of the air flow through them. This is reinforced by evidence of progressive drying through the winter measured during SOLVE-1. The significance of this process lies in its effect on the upper tropospheric water content of the middle and high latitude tropopause region, which plays an important role in regulating the earth's radiative balance. There appears to be significant year-to-year variability in the incidence of the cold outbreaks. This work has two parts. First, we describe case studies of dehydration taken from the SOLVE and SOLVE2 aircraft sampling missions during the Arctic winters of 2000 and 2003 respectively. Trajectory based microphysical modeling is employed to examine the sensitivity of the dehydration to microphysical parameters and the nature of sub-grid scale temperature fluctuations. We then examine the year-to-year variations in potential dehydration using a trajectory climatology.
Document ID
20040087107
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Pfister, Leonhard
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Jensen, Eric
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Podolske, James
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Selkirk, Henry
(Bay Area Environmental Research Inst. CA, United States)
Anderson, Bruce
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Avery, Melody
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Diskin. Glenn
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 21, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2004
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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