0000000000179752
AUTHOR
Holger Vömel
Assessment of Observational Evidence for Direct Convective Hydration of the Lower Stratosphere
In situ and remote sensing observations of water vapor are analyzed to assess the evidence for direct convective hydration of the lower stratosphere. We have examined several hundred balloon-borne and airborne in situ measurements of lower stratospheric humidity in the tropics and northern midlatitudes. We find that the tropical lower stratospheric H2O enhancements above the background occur quite infrequently, and the height of the enhancements is within about 1 km of the cold-point tropopause. Following Schwartz et al. (2013, https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50421), we examine the anomalously high (above 8 ppmv) water vapor mixing ratios retrieved by the Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) at 10…
Nitric acid trihydrate nucleation and denitrification in the Arctic stratosphere
Abstract. Nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) particles in the polar stratosphere have been shown to be responsible for vertical redistribution of reactive nitrogen (NOy). Recent observations by Cloud–Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) aboard the CALIPSO satellite have been explained in terms of heterogeneous nucleation of NAT on foreign nuclei, revealing this to be an important formation pathway for the NAT particles. In state of the art global- or regional-scale models, heterogeneous NAT nucleation is currently simulated in a very coarse manner using a constant, saturation-independent nucleation rate. Here we present first simulations for the Arctic winter 2009/2010 applying a n…