HR: 08:00h
AN: A21B-01    [PDF]
TI: Meteorological mechanisms favoring Trans-Pacific Transport of Eurasian Pollutants on intraseasonal to interannual timescales
AU: * Liang, Q
EM: qing@atmos.washington.edu
AF: Department of Atmospheric Sciences, BOX 351640, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
AU: Jaegle, L
EM: jaegle@atmos.washington.edu
AF: Department of Atmospheric Sciences, BOX 351640, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
AB: We use a 10-year global 3-D model simulation to conduct a systematic analysis of the meteorological mechanisms leading to long-range transport of Eurasian pollutants to the Northeast Pacific atmosphere. We find that export of Asian and European pollutants in the lower troposphere over East Asia is strongly correlated with anomalously low sea level pressures over East Asia, especially during spring. This correlation reflects the dominant role of mid-latitude cyclones as an export mechanism for Asian pollutants. Import of Asian and European pollution to the Northeast Pacific below 3 km altitude is positively correlated with the intensity of the Pacific High with maximum correlation found in spring/winter. This highlights that advection around the Pacific High is an efficient pathway to transport pollutants across the Pacific over to the NE Pacific. Based on the centers of action found in the correlation analysis, we form teleconnection indices using sea level pressure (without the annual cycle) within two regions in the western and eastern Pacific. We compare these indices to intraseasonal and interannual variability in long-range transport and investigate their predictive ability in forecasting lower tropospheric trans-Pacific transport events. A similar analysis will be applied to long-range transport in the middle and upper troposphere.
DE: 0368 Troposphere--constituent transport and chemistry
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting