We develop a series of models of transport in the upper tropical troposphere in order to explain the observed abundance and isotopic composition of stratospheric water vapor. We start with the Rayleigh fractionation process and add the effects of mixing and recirculation of stratospheric air through the upper troposphere. We compare our measurements with model calculations for a range of input ...

To investigate dominant vertical structures of observed temperature perturbations, and to test the temperature implications of the convective quasi-equilibrium hypothesis, the relationship of the tropical temperature profile to the average free tropospheric temperature is examined in Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) satellite data, radiosonde observations, and National Centers for Environmen...

We investigate formation of sulfate aerosol in the marine troposphere from neutral and charged nucleation of H2SO4 and H2O. A box model of neutral and charged aerosol processes is run on a grid covering the oceans. Input data are taken from a model of galactic cosmic rays in the atmosphere, and from global chemistry and transport models. We find a weak aerosol production over the tropical ocean...

[1] The vertical and spatial structure of the atmospheric El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal is investigated using radio occultation (RO) data from August 2006 to December 2010. Due to their high vertical resolution and global coverage, RO data are well suited to describe the full 3-dimensional ENSO structure in the troposphere and lower stratosphere. We find that interannual temperatur...

Atmospheric temperature is one of the most important climate variables. This observational study presents detailed descriptions of the temperature variability imprinted in the 9-year brightness temperature data acquired by the Advanced Microwave Sounding UnitInstrument A (AMSU-A) aboard Aqua since September 2002 over tropical oceans. A non-linear, adaptive method called the Ensemble Joint Multi...

[1] A three-dimensional chemical transport model is utilized to study the transport out of the Antarctic polar vortex during the southern hemisphere spring. On average, over five consecutive years between 1993 and 1997, horizontal transport out of the vortex into the midlatitude stratosphere is smaller than vertical transport into the troposphere. However, there is significant interannual varia...

Climate change in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) polar stratosphere is associated with substantial changes in the atmospheric circulation that extend to the earth’s surface. The mechanisms that drive the changes in the SH troposphere are not fully understood, but most previous hypotheses have focused on the role of atmospheric dynamics rather than that of radiation. This study quantifies the radi...