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HIRDLS – Oxford Open Science Meeting HIRDLS Observations of Cirrus Near the Tropopause Based upon: Spring 2008 AGU Joint Assembly Ft. Lauderdale, Florida Steven T. Massie, John Gille, John Barnett, Joan Alexander, William Reed, Rashid Khosravi, Cheryl Craig, Bill Randel, Fei Wu
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HIRDLS – Oxford Open Science Meeting HIRDLS Observations of Cirrus Near the Tropopause Based upon: Spring 2008 AGU Joint Assembly Ft. Lauderdale, Florida Steven T. Massie, John Gille, John Barnett, Joan Alexander, William Reed, Rashid Khosravi, Cheryl Craig, Bill Randel, Fei Wu massie@ucar.edu
Outline Cirrus is produced in-situ by freezing of humid layers blow-off from deep convection cold temperature perturbations of dynamical waves The HIRDLS observations are correlated to RHI (relative humidity with respect to ice) OLR (outgoing longwave radiation) Wave temperature perturbations (Twave) RHI - AURA Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) OLR - Climate Diagnostics Center Twave – HIRDLS and COSMIC (gps) temperature analyses Focus is on the Tropics
January 2006, 100 hPa HIRDLS Cloud Frequency MLS RHI
HIRDLS Cirrus Observations at 82 hPa Cloud Frequency Extinction These patterns are very similar to the RHI patterns
MLS RHI and HIRDLS Cirrus at 82 hPa Cloud Frequency Extinction RHI > 100 %
CDC OLR (Proxy of Deep Convection) Longitudes near 100 are over Indonesia Deep convection is present when OLR < 170 W / m2 (green colored regions)
Correlations of RHI and Extinction with OLR Correlations are not as strong as RHI versus Extinction Not all Cirrus is directly related to deep convection
Lidar Observations of Cirrus and Temperature Waves Green: ΔT between -1 and -4 K Boehm and Verlinde , GRL, v27, p3209, 2000
Equatorial Wave Temperatures HIRDLS analyses courtesy of Joan Alexander, and COSMIC analyses courtesy of Bill Randel and Fei Wu
COSMIC Temperature Waves and HIRDLS Extinction
Discussion HIRDLS vertical resolution ~ 1 Km, while MLS ~ several Km A 1 KM cirrus layer can be sandwiched by low RHI air above and below the cloud structure, and clouds can be present for RHI < 100% Largest correlations are between RHI and Extinction A consequence of thermodynamics ! Correlations of OLR and cirrus extinction are weak Not all cirrus is derived from convective blow-off Negative temperature perturbations due to tropical dynamical waves are correlated with larger cirrus extinction