The heat balance of the tropical tropopause, cirrus, and stratospheric dehydration
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In this paper, it was shown that if tropical tropopause cirrus clouds lie above convective anvils with tops above about 13km, net radiative cooling from the cirrus can be produced that is large enough to offset significant subsidence heating, even at the lowest temperatures observed in the tropics.Abstract:
If tropical tropopause cirrus lie above convective anvils with tops above about 13km, then net radiative cooling from the cirrus can be produced that is large enough to offset significant subsidence heating, even at the lowest temperatures observed in the tropics. Cirrus clouds near the tropopause are strongly heated by radiation unless they lie above convective anvil clouds. Radiative relaxation in the tropical troposphere is slow above about 14km unless clouds are present. Radiative cooling of tropopause cirrus may be important in processes that dehydrate air before it enters the stratosphere.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Tropical tropopause layer
TL;DR: The Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL) as discussed by the authors is a 3D model of the troposphere, and it has been shown that the transition from troposphere to stratosphere occurs in a layer, rather than at a sharp "tropopause".
Journal ArticleDOI
THE CALIPSO MISSION: A Global 3D View of Aerosols and Clouds
David M. Winker,Jacques Pelon,James A. Coakley,Steven A. Ackerman,Robert J. Charlson,Peter R. Colarco,Pierre H. Flamant,Qiang Fu,Raymond M. Hoff,Chieko Kittaka,T. L. Kubar,H. Le Treut,M. P. McCormick,Gérard Mégie,Lamont R. Poole,Kathleen A. Powell,Chip Trepte,Mark A. Vaughan,Bruce A. Wielicki +18 more
TL;DR: CALIPSO as mentioned in this paper is a two-wavelength, polarization-sensitive lidar, along with two passive sensors operating in the visible and thermal infrared spectral regions for long-term atmospheric measurements from Earth's orbit.
Journal ArticleDOI
Horizontal transport and the dehydration of the stratosphere
James R. Holton,Andrew Gettelman +1 more
TL;DR: Horizontal transport through this cold trap region causes air parcels that reach the tropopause at other longitudes to be dehydrated to the very low saturation mixing ratios characteristic of the cold trap, and hence can explain why observed tropical stratospheric water vapor mixing ratios are often lower than the saturation mixing ratio at the mean Tropopause temperature as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
An important constraint on tropical cloud ‐ climate feedback
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that tropical convective anvil clouds and upper tropospheric water vapor are essentially independent of the surface temperature, so long as the tropopause is colder than the temperature where emission from water vapor becomes relatively small.
Journal ArticleDOI
Physical processes in the tropical tropopause layer and their roles in a changing climate
William J. Randel,Eric J. Jensen +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a synthesis report concludes that transport and mixing in the tropopause region are closely linked with the Asian monsoon and other tropical circulation systems, with possible implications for the impacts of climate change on this important layer.
References
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Stratosphere‐troposphere exchange
James R. Holton,Peter H. Haynes,Michael E. McIntyre,Anne R. Douglass,Richard B. Rood,Leonhard Pfister +5 more
TL;DR: The role of wave-induced forces in the extratropical overworld is discussed in this paper, where the authors focus on the role of waves and eddies in the overworld overworld and show that the global exchange rate is determined by details of near-tropopause phenomena such as penetrative cumulus convection or small-scale mixing associated with upper level fronts and cyclones.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evidence for a world circulation provided by the measurements of helium and water vapour distribution in the stratosphere
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the vertical distribution of water vapour and helium in the lower stratosphere over southern England and found that the helium content of the air is remarkably constant up to 20 km but the water content is found to fall very rapidly just above the tropopause, and in the lowest 1 km of the stratosphere the humidity mixing ratio falls through a ratio of 10-1.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the correlated k-distribution method for radiative transfer in nonhomogeneous atmospheres
Qiang Fu,Kuo-Nan Liou +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a correlated k(absorption coefficient)-distribution (CKD) method for radiative transfer in nonhomogeneous atmospheres, in terms of the physical and mathematical conditions under which this method is valid is discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
An Accurate Parameterization of the Infrared Radiative Properties of Cirrus Clouds for Climate Models
TL;DR: In this article, the extinction coefficient, absorption coefficient, and asymmetry factor are parameterized as functions of the cloud ice water content and generalized effective size, and validated by examining the bulk radiative properties for a wide range of atmospheric conditions.
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The tropical tropopause
TL;DR: The physical meaning of several different tropical tropopause definitions is examined using atmospheric data from a variety of sources, and model output as mentioned in this paper, and the results from a baroclinic model with imposed diabatic heating are used to support the hypothesis that both these features can be attributed to the direct response of the atmosphere to a large-scale region of tropospheric diaboastic heating.
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