HR: 0800h
AN: A51C-0781    [Abstracts]
TI: Using MOZAIC Measurements in the Upper Troposphere to Test for Photochemical Bias from Met Fields in the UCI CTM (GISS, Oslo/EC) and NASA GMI (GISS, DAO, CCM3) Models.
AU: * Bortz, S E
EM: bortz@uci.edu
AU: Prather, M J
EM: mprather@uci.edu
AB: Our purpose in studying the MOZAIC (Measurement of Ozone and Water Vapor by Airbus In-Service Aircraft) datasets was to better characterize the upper tropical troposphere by analyzing the water vapor, temperature, and O3 measurements, identifying statistical relationships between the different parameters, and comparing the measurements with model results. From August 1993 to December 2003, data from 21,902 flights had been collected, with approximately 90% of the sampling atcruise altitudes along seven near-constant pressure levels between 300hPa and 200hPa (i.e...~8-12km), and approximately 10% of the sampling occurring in the tropics. Because water vapor is tightly coupled with OH production, and temperature and water vapor are coupled with HOx and NOx chemistry, the MOZAIC data were analyzed for trends in interannual variability, seasonality, and covariance of temperature, water vapor, and ozone in the upper tropical troposphere. Comparison of the high frequency MOZAIC data sampled along cruise altitudes with the meteorological fields used in chemical transport models specifically the European Center and the NASA-GISS GMI meteorological fields), provided a clean test for biases in model representation of atmospheric mixing and turnover rates. Study of the MOZAIC data showed that within the upper Tropical troposphere, temperature has very little seasonality or variability, water vapor shows strong seasonality and variability, and the largest discrepancies between the MOZAIC data and the models were with water vapor.
DE: 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE
DE: 0399 General or miscellaneous
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting