Observations of convective and dynamical instabilities in tropopause folds and their contribution to stratosphere-troposphere exchange
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Choetal-1999JGR3.pdf
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Cho, John Y. N.
Newell, Reginald E.
Bui, T. Paul
Browell, Edward V.
Fenn, Marta A.
Mahoney, Michael J.
Gregory, Gerald L.
Sachse, Glen W.
Vay, Stephanie A.
Kucsera, Tom L.
Date Issued
September 1999
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Citation
Cho, John Y. N. et al. “Observations of Convective and Dynamical Instabilities in Tropopause Folds and Their Contribution to Stratosphere-Troposphere Exchange.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 104, D17 (September 1999): 21549–21568 © 1999 American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
With aircraft-mounted in situ and remote sensing instruments for dynamical, thermal, and chemical measurements we studied two cases of tropopause folding. In both folds we found Kelvin-Helmholtz billows with horizontal wavelength of ∼900 m and thickness of ∼120 m. In one case the instability was effectively mixing the bottomside of the fold, leading to the transfer of stratospheric air into the troposphere. Also, we discovered in both cases small-scale secondary ozone maxima shortly after the aircraft ascended past the topside of the fold that corresponded to regions of convective instability. We interpreted this phenomenon as convectively breaking gravity waves. Therefore we posit that convectively breaking gravity waves acting on tropopause folds must be added to the list of important irreversible mixing mechanisms leading to stratosphere-troposphere exchange.
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/10.1029/1999JD900430
