Identification

Title

Diagnosing observed stratospheric water vapor relationships to the cold point tropical tropopause

Abstract

Dehydration at the tropical cold point tropopause primarily controls the entry value of water vapor to the stratosphere, with additional (uncertain) contributions from subtropical monsoonal circulations and extreme deep convection. Here we quantify the links of observed stratospheric water vapor with near‐equatorial cold point temperature (TCP), based on interannual variations of monthly zonal averages over the period 1993-2017. Water vapor observations are from combined Halogen Occultation Experiment and Aura Microwave Limb Sounder satellite measurements, and cold point temperatures are from high quality radiosondes and GPS satellite data. Interannual water vapor anomalies are highly correlated with TCP, and coherent patterns can be traced in space and time away from the tropical tropopause to quantify transport in the Brewer‐Dobson circulation, including diagnosing seasonal changes in circulation. Lagged regressions with TCP are used to reconstruct water vapor variations directly tied to the cold point, and these reconstructions account for a majority of the observed interannual water vapor variability in the lower to middle stratosphere over most of the globe. Small systematic differences from observed water vapor can identify processes not tied to zonal average TCP, and/or possible uncertainties in the satellite measurements.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7p26xh6

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-07-09T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact