Stratosphere-troposphere transport in a numerical simulation of midlatitude convection

Chagnon, J. M. and Gray, S. L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8658-362X (2007) Stratosphere-troposphere transport in a numerical simulation of midlatitude convection. Journal of Geophysical Research, 112 (D6). DO6314. ISSN 0148-0227 doi: 10.1029/2006JD007265

Abstract/Summary

The transport of stratospheric air deep into the troposphere via convection is investigated numerically using the UK Met Office Unified Model. A convective system that formed on 27 June 2004 near southeast England, in the vicinity an upper level potential vorticity anomaly and a lowered tropopause, provides the basis for analysis. Transport is diagnosed using a stratospheric tracer that can either be passed through or withheld from the model’s convective parameterization scheme. Three simulations are performed at increasingly finer resolutions, with horizontal grid lengths of 12, 4, and 1 km. In the 12 and 4 km simulations, tracer is transported deeply into the troposphere by the parameterized convection. In the 1 km simulation, for which the convective parameterization is disengaged, deep transport is still accomplished but with a much smaller magnitude. However, the 1 km simulation resolves stirring along the tropopause that does not exist in the coarser simulations. In all three simulations, the concentration of the deeply transported tracer is small, three orders of magnitude less than that of the shallow transport near the tropopause, most likely because of the efficient dilution of parcels in the lower troposphere.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/936
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Geophysical Union
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