Tracer exchange between tropics and middle latitudes

The interaction between the tropics and middle latitudes is studied using a tracer emitted at 50 hPa along a great circle route between Los Angeles, USA and Sydney, Australia. Though designed to examine the impact of stratospheric aircraft, the study more generally addresses the transport between tropics and middle latitudes for a three month period from January through March 1989. The results show that air is transported from the tropics to middle latitudes by planetary scale and tropospheric cyclonic scale waves. Except for intrusions by these wave events, the tropics are substantially isolated throughout the lower stratosphere. These waves draw material out of the tropics which ends up in the middle latitude westerly jets, with little material entering the winter polar latitudes prior to the springtime transition. The summer Southern Hemisphere is characterized by tracer being drawn out in streamers that extend from north and west to south and east. The material in the tropics is zonally asymmetric. The material that reaches the troposphere comes down in the synoptic scale eddies and is concentrated in the middle latitude jet stream. These characteristics are similar to those observed during the dispersion of volcanic clouds.