Details:

Personal Author:
Rollins, A. W. ; Thornberry, T. D. ; Gao, R. S. ; Woods, S. ; Lawson, R. P. ; ... More +
Rollins, A. W. ; Thornberry, T. D. ; Gao, R. S. ; Woods, S. ; Lawson, R. P. ; Bui, T. P. ; Jensen, E. J. ; Fahey, D. W. ; Less -
NOAA Program & Office:
OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; ESRL (Earth System Research Laboratory) ; CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) ;
OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; ESRL (Earth System Research Laboratory) ; CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) ; Less -
Description:
The efficiency of dehydration in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) determines how closely water vapor will be reduced to the lowest saturation mixing ratio encountered along a trajectory to the stratosphere, thereby strongly influencing stratospheric humidity. The NASA Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX) provided an unprecedented number and quality of in situ observations to constrain the key mechanisms controlling this dehydration. Statistical analyses of the ATTREX data show that nucleation, growth, and sedimentation each result in TTL dehydration becoming increasingly inefficient at temperatures below 200K. Because of these inefficiencies, models that ignore these mechanisms likely underestimate water vapor at the stratospheric entry point by 10-20% at the lowest temperatures.
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, 43(6), 2912-2918.
DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016gl067972
Document Type:
Journal Article ;
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urn:sha256:1f97f7a3dbf1f23cba8f98705caba9c8b9baed4c5617900c586d103433330ec1
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