The impact of cirrus clouds on tropical troposphere-to-stratosphere transport
By T. Corti, B. Luo, Q. Fu, Holger Vömel, T. Peter. 2006
160 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Although it is well known that air enters the stratosphere preferentially through upwelling in the tropics, the exact mechanisms of troposphere-to-stratosphere transport (TST) are still unknown. Previously proposed mechanisms have been found either to be too slow (e.g., clear sky upwelling) to provide agreement with in situ tracer measurements, or to be insufficient in mass flux to act as a major supply for the Brewer-Dobson circulation (e.g., convective overshooting). In this study we evaluate whether the lofting of air via cirrus cloud-radiation interaction might offer an alternative path for TST, which is responsible for a significant fraction of the observed air mass transport. We find that a combination of deep convection and subsequent upwelling associated with cirrus clouds and clear sky can explain the supply of air for the Brewer-Dobson circulation. Thus, upwelling associated with cirrus clouds offers a mechanism for the missing second stage, which links the first stage of TST, deep convection, to the third stage, the Brewer-Dobson circulation.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7ed8320c91149c79aaec6f5e9e6ada385e7f4f81
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In Atmospheric Science
In Global and Planetary Change
- William J. Randel
- Fei Wu
- B. Luo
- S. Borrmann
- D. Seidel
- T. G. Shepherd
- Andrew E. Dessler
- Michael J. Prather
Citations in the corpus
- Unprecedented evidence for deep convection hydrating the tropical stratosphere (2008, background): “This hypothesis is supported by the distribution of high cirrus clouds [e.g., Wang et al., 1996] and water vapor [Read et al., 2004], by trajectory studies [Jensen and Pfister, 2004; Fueglistaler et al., 2005] and radiative calculation [Corti et al., 2006].”
- A Large Annual Cycle in Ozone above the Tropical Tropopause Linked to the Brewer–Dobson Circulation (2007, background): “…levels for both estimates [the radiative heating calculations do not include the effects of cirrus or deep convective clouds, which could be important near and above the tropopause (Corti et al. 2006; Fueglistaler and Fu 2006), and the ozone results are based on the simplified balance in Eq.”