Anomalous scaling of mesoscale tropospheric humidity fluctuations
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Choetal-2000.pdf
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Author(s)
Sachse, Glen W.
Cho, John Y. N.
Newell, Reginald E.
Date Issued
February 2000
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Cho, John Y. N. et al. “Anomalous Scaling of Mesoscale Tropospheric Humidity Fluctuations.” Geophysical Research Letters 27, 3 (February 2000): 377–380 © 2000 American Geophysical Union
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Water vapor fluctuations are measured and analyzed at an unprecedented 10-m resolution throughout the troposphere. Computation of structure functions shows that specific humidity variations observed by research aircraft over the Pacific Ocean exhibit anomalous scaling from about 50 m to 100 km in horizontal range. The scaling laws show different characteristics for the marine boundary layer, the tropical free troposphere, and the extratropical free troposphere. More specifically, boundary-layer humidity fluctuations are less smooth and more stationary than those in the free troposphere, while the extratropical free tropospheric variations are less intermittent than those in the other two regions. The anomalous scaling results argue against passive advection by a spatially smooth flow (chaotic advection) at these scales.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/1999GL010846
