HR: 11:50h
AN: A31G-07    [PDF]
TI: On the Life-Cycle of a Stratospheric Intrusion and its Large-Scale Mixing with Polluted Warm Conveyor Belts
AU: * Cooper, O
EM: ocooper@al.noaa.gov
AF: Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) University of Colorado/NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, R/AL4 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Forster, C
EM: forster@forst.tu-muenchen.de
AF: Department of Ecology Technical University of Munich, Am Hochanger 13, Freising-Weihensteph, 85354 Germany
AU: Parrish, D
EM: dparrish@al.noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, R/AL7 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Dunlea, E
EM: dunlea@post.harvard.edu
AF: Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 United States
AU: Hbler, G
EM: gerd@al.noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, R/AL7 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Fehsenfeld, F
EM: fcf@al.noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, R/AL7 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Holloway, J
EM: jholloway@al.noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, R/AL7 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Oltmans, S
EM: Samual.J.Oltmans@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Johnson, B
EM: Bryan.Johnson@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Wimmers, A
EM: wimmers@ssec.wisc.edu
AF: Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1225 W. Dayton St., Madison, WI 53706 United States
AU: Horowitz, L
EM: lwh@gfdl.noaa.gov
AF: GFDL/NOAA, P.O. Box 308 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542-0308 United States
AB: The aircraft-based 2002 Intercontinental Transport and Chemical Transformation experiment intercepted and chemically analyzed pollution plumes transported from Asia to the western United States. The research flight on May 10-11, 2002 detected mixing between polluted and stratospheric air at mid-tropospheric levels above the California coast. This study uses a Lagrangian domain-filling trajectory technique to illustrate that this event was the result of mixing between two warm conveyor belts (WCB) containing Asian pollution and the remnants of a deep tropopause fold from a downstream mid-latitude cyclone (SCDA). Advection of the trajectory particles shows how the SCDA decayed over 7.5 days. One component mixed with a downstream WCB, while another component descended into the lower troposphere and became entrained by an upwind WCB. After 7.5 days of transport 22 percent of the SCDA mass was transported into the troposphere. The portions of the SCDA that penetrated to the lowest altitudes had the greatest likelihood of being transported into the troposphere. For example, over 90 percent of the SCDA at altitudes below the 600 hPa level was transported to the troposphere, but none of the mass at the 200 hPa level was exchanged. More than half of the exchange occurred during the first 48 hours as the deepest portions of the tropopause fold decayed over the Pacific. The rest of the exchange occurred over the following 5.5 days as the remnants of the SCDA sheared apart along the edge of the stratospheric polar vortex and became entrained into subsequent tropopause folds and vortex breakaway features. Stratosphere to troposphere exchange resulted in the transport of 0.5 Tg of stratospheric ozone to the troposphere during the 7.5 day study period. A very high percentage (65 percent) of the SCDA particles that entered the troposphere subsequently mixed with the upwind and downwind WCBs.
DE: 0322 Constituent sources and sinks
DE: 0368 Troposphere--constituent transport and chemistry
DE: 3362 Stratosphere/troposphere interactions
DE: 3364 Synoptic-scale meteorology
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting