scholarly journals A convolution of observational and model data to estimate age of air spectra in the northern hemispheric lower stratosphere

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (14) ◽  
pp. 8763-8785 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Hauck ◽  
Harald Bönisch ◽  
Peter Hoor ◽  
Timo Keber ◽  
Felix Ploeger ◽  
...  

Abstract. Derivation of mean age of air (AoA) and age spectra from atmospheric measurements remains a challenge and often requires output from atmospheric models. This study tries to minimize the direct influence of model output and presents an extension and application of a previously established inversion method to derive age spectra from mixing ratios of long- and short-lived trace gases. For a precise description of cross-tropopause transport processes, the inverse method is extended to incorporate air entrainment into the stratosphere across the tropical and extratropical tropopause. We first use simulations with the Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS) to provide a general proof of concept of the extended principle in a controllable and consistent environment, where the method is applied to an idealized set of 10 trace gases with predefined constant lifetimes and compared to reference model age spectra. In the second part of the study we apply the extended inverse method to atmospheric measurements of multiple long- and short-lived trace gases measured aboard the High Altitude and Long Range (HALO) research aircraft during the two research campaigns POLSTRACC–GW-LCYCLE–SALSA (PGS) and Wave-driven Isentropic Exchange (WISE). As some of the observed species undergo significant loss processes in the stratosphere, a Monte Carlo simulation is introduced to retrieve age spectra and chemical lifetimes in stepwise fashion and to account for the large uncertainties. Results show that in the idealized model scenario the inverse method retrieves age spectra robustly on annual and seasonal scales. The extension to multiple entry regions proves reasonable as our CLaMS simulations reveal that in the model between 50 % and 70 % of air in the lowermost stratosphere has entered through the extratropical tropopause (30–90∘ N and S) on annual average. When applied to observational data of PGS and WISE, the method derives age spectra and mean AoA with meaningful spatial distributions and quantitative range, yet large uncertainties. Results indicate that entrainment of fresh tropospheric air across both the extratropical and tropical tropopause peaked prior to both campaigns, but with lower mean AoA for WISE than PGS data. The ratio of moments for all retrieved age spectra for PGS and WISE is found to range between 0.52 and 2.81 years. We conclude that the method derives reasonable and consistent age spectra using observations of chemically active trace gases. Our findings might contribute to an improved assessment of transport with age spectra in future studies.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Hauck ◽  
Harald Bönisch ◽  
Peter Hoor ◽  
Timo Keber ◽  
Felix Ploeger ◽  
...  

Abstract. Derivation of mean age of air (AoA) and age spectra from atmospheric measurements remains a challenge and often requires data from atmospheric models. This study tries to minimize the direct influence of model data and presents an extension and application of a previously established inversion method to derive age spectra from mixing ratios of long- and short-lived trace gases. For a precise description of cross-tropopause transport processes, the inverse method is extended to incorporate air entrainment into the stratosphere across the tropical and extratropical tropopause. We first use simulations with the Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS) to provide a general proof of concept of the extended principle in a controllable and consistent environment, where the method is applied to an idealized set of ten trace gases with predefined constant lifetimes and compared to reference model age spectra. In the second part of the study we apply the extended inverse method to atmospheric measurements of multiple long- and short-lived trace gases measured aboard the High Altitude and Long Range (HALO) research aircraft during the two research campaigns POLSTRACC/GW-LCYCLE/SALSA (PGS) and Wave-driven Isentropic Exchange (WISE). As some of the observed species undergo significant loss processes in the stratosphere, a Monte Carlo simulation is introduced to retrieve age spectra and chemical lifetimes in stepwise fashion and to account for the large uncertainties. Results show that in the idealized model scenario the inverse method retrieves age spectra robustly on annual and seasonal scale. The extension to multiple entry regions proves reasonable as our CLaMS simulations reveal that in the model between 50 % and 70 % of air in the lowermost stratosphere has entered through the extratropical tropopause (30°–90° N/S) on annual average. When applied to observational data of PGS and WISE the method derives age spectra and mean AoA with meaningful spatial distributions and quantitative range, yet large uncertainties. Results indicate that entrainment of fresh tropospheric air across both extratropical and tropical tropopause has peaked prior to both campaigns, but with lower mean AoA for WISE than PGS data. For a full assessment the ratio of moments for all retrieved age spectra is evaluated and found to range between 0.52 years and 2.81 years for PGS and WISE. It is concluded that the method derives reasonable and consistent age spectra using observations of chemically active trace gases. Our findings might contribute to an improved assessment of transport with age spectra in future studies.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meike Rotermund ◽  
Ben Schreiner ◽  
Flora Kluge ◽  
Tilman Hüneke ◽  
Andreas Engel ◽  
...  

<p>Bromine greatly influences the UT/LS ozone concentrations, however the transport of bromine across the tropical tropopause layer and in particular across the extratropical tropopause is not well quantified. Air-borne measurements of atmospheric trace gases such as organic and inorganic bromine along the tropopause are studied during the WISE (Wave-driven ISentropic Exchange) research campaign over the northern Atlantic and western Europe from September 13 - October 21, 2017. The remote sensing instrument mini-DOAS (Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy) is mounted on the HALO (High Altitude and LOng range) aircraft and measures BrO (O<sub>3</sub>, NO<sub>2</sub> among other trace gases). The novel scaling method is applied to infer the target gas BrO mixing ratios from slant column densities using in-situ O<sub>3</sub> measurements from the FAIRO instrument (operated by KIT) as the scaling gas. For each flight, the inferred mixing ratios are directly compared with CLaMS (Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere) simulated curtains of the trace gases along the flight path. The partitioning coefficient of inorganic bromine from CLaMS and all relevant organic halogen species and air mass ages (SF<sub>6</sub>, CO<sub>2</sub>) from the GhOST-MS instrument (operated by UFra) are used to determine the total bromine budget along the UT/LS. A climatology of organic, inorganic and total bromine is constructed with respect to the extratropical tropopause as well as the air mass ages. This indicates the interplay of bromine transport across the extratropical tropopause and of the transport of air via the lower branch from the tropics as well as potential losses of inorganic bromine by uptake onto and sedimentation of ice particles.</p>


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Hauck ◽  
Frauke Fritsch ◽  
Hella Garny ◽  
Andreas Engel

Abstract. Analysis of stratospheric transport from an observational point of view is frequently realized by evaluation of mean age of air values from long-lived trace gases. However, this provides more insight into general transport strength and less into its mechanism. Deriving complete transit time distributions (age spectra) is desirable, but their deduction from direct measurements is difficult and so far primarily achieved by assumptions about dynamics and spectra themselves. This paper introduces a modified version of an inverse method to infer age spectra from mixing ratios of short-lived trace gases. For a full description of transport seasonality the formulation includes an imposed seasonal cycle to gain multimodal spectra. The EMAC model simulation used for a proof of concept features an idealized dataset of 40 radioactive trace gases with different chemical lifetimes as well as 40 chemically inert pulsed trace gases to calculate pulse age spectra. Annual and seasonal mean inverse spectra are compared to pulse spectra including first and second moments as well as the ratio between them to assess the performance on these time scales. Results indicate that the modified inverse age spectra match the annual and seasonal pulse age spectra well on global scale beyond 1.5 years mean age of air. The imposed seasonal cycle emerges as a reliable tool to include transport seasonality in the age spectra. Below 1.5 years mean age of air, tropospheric influence intensifies and breaks the assumption of single entry through the tropical tropopause, leading to inaccurate spectra in particular in the northern hemisphere. The imposed seasonal cycle wrongly prescribes seasonal entry in this lower region and does not lead to a better agreement between inverse and pulse age spectra without further improvement. As the inverse method aims for future implementation on in situ observational data, possible critical factors for this purpose are delineated finally.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 21013-21054 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. L. Steiner ◽  
S. N. Pressley ◽  
A. Botros ◽  
E. Jones ◽  
S. H. Chung ◽  
...  

Abstract. Intermittent coherent structures can be responsible for a large fraction of the chemical exchange between the vegetation canopy and the atmosphere. Quantifying their contribution to fluxes is necessary to interpret measurements of trace gases and aerosols within and above forest canopies. The primary objective of the Community Atmosphere-Biosphere Interactions Experiment (CABINEX) field campaign (10 July 2009 to 9 August 2009) was to study the chemistry of volatile organic compounds (VOC) within and above a forest canopy. In this manuscript, we provide an analysis of coherent structures and canopy-atmosphere exchange during CABINEX to support in-canopy gradient measurements of VOC. We quantify the number and duration of coherent structure events and their percent contribution to momentum and heat fluxes with two methods: (1) quadrant-hole analysis and (2) wavelet analysis. Despite differences in the duration and number of events, both methods predict that coherent structures contribute 40–50 % to total momentum fluxes and 44–65 % to total heat fluxes during the CABINEX campaign. Contributions associated with coherent structures are slightly greater under stable rather than unstable conditions. By comparing heat fluxes within and above the canopy, we determine the degree of coupling between upper canopy and atmosphere and find that they are coupled to the majority of the campaign time period. Uncoupled canopy-atmosphere events occur in the early morning (04:00–08:00 LT) approximately 30 % of the time. This study confirms that coherent structures contribute significantly to the exchange of heat and momentum between the canopy and atmosphere at the CABINEX site, and indicates the need to include these transport processes when studying the mixing and chemical reactions of trace gases and aerosols between a forest canopy and the atmosphere.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1163-1181
Author(s):  
Michal T. Filus ◽  
Elliot L. Atlas ◽  
Maria A. Navarro ◽  
Elena Meneguz ◽  
David Thomson ◽  
...  

Abstract. The effectiveness of transport of short-lived halocarbons to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere remains an important uncertainty in quantifying the supply of ozone-depleting substances to the stratosphere. In early 2014, a major field campaign in Guam in the western Pacific, involving UK and US research aircraft, sampled the tropical troposphere and lower stratosphere. The resulting measurements of CH3I, CHBr3 and CH2Br2 are compared here with calculations from a Lagrangian model. This methodology benefits from an updated convection scheme that improves simulation of the effect of deep convective motions on particle distribution within the tropical troposphere. We find that the observed CH3I, CHBr3 and CH2Br2 mixing ratios in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) are consistent with those in the boundary layer when the new convection scheme is used to account for convective transport. More specifically, comparisons between modelled estimates and observations of short-lived CH3I indicate that the updated convection scheme is realistic up to the lower TTL but is less good at reproducing the small number of extreme convective events in the upper TTL. This study consolidates our understanding of the transport of short-lived halocarbons to the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere by using improved model calculations to confirm consistency between observations in the boundary layer, observations in the TTL and atmospheric transport processes. Our results support recent estimates of the contribution of short-lived bromocarbons to the stratospheric bromine budget.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 767-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodor Petrut ◽  
Thomas Geay ◽  
Cédric Gervaise ◽  
Philippe Belleudy ◽  
Sebastien Zanker

Abstract. Monitoring sediment transport processes in rivers is of particular interest to engineers and scientists to assess the stability of rivers and hydraulic structures. Various methods for sediment transport process description were proposed using conventional or surrogate measurement techniques. This paper addresses the topic of the passive acoustic monitoring of bedload transport in rivers and especially the estimation of the bedload grain size distribution from self-generated noise. It discusses the feasibility of linking the acoustic signal spectrum shape to bedload grain sizes involved in elastic impacts with the river bed treated as a massive slab. Bedload grain size distribution is estimated by a regularized algebraic inversion scheme fed with the power spectrum density of river noise estimated from one hydrophone. The inversion methodology relies upon a physical model that predicts the acoustic field generated by the collision between rigid bodies. Here we proposed an analytic model of the acoustic energy spectrum generated by the impacts between a sphere and a slab. The proposed model computes the power spectral density of bedload noise using a linear system of analytic energy spectra weighted by the grain size distribution. The algebraic system of equations is then solved by least square optimization and solution regularization methods. The result of inversion leads directly to the estimation of the bedload grain size distribution. The inversion method was applied to real acoustic data from passive acoustics experiments realized on the Isère River, in France. The inversion of in situ measured spectra reveals good estimations of grain size distribution, fairly close to what was estimated by physical sampling instruments. These results illustrate the potential of the hydrophone technique to be used as a standalone method that could ensure high spatial and temporal resolution measurements for sediment transport in rivers.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shlomi Ziskin Ziv ◽  
Chaim I. Garfinkel

<p>Understanding the sinks, sources and transport processes of stratospheric trace gases can improve our prediction of mid to long term climate change. In this study we consider the processes that lead to variability in stratospheric water vapor. We perform a Multiple Linear Regression(MLR) on the SWOOSH combined anomaly filled water vapor product with ENSO, QBO, BDC, mid-tropospheric temperature, and CH4 as predictors, in an attempt to find the factors that most succinctly explain observed water vapor variability. We also consider the fraction of entry water vapor variability that can be accounted for by variations of the cold point temperature as an upper bound on how much water vapor variability is predictable from large scale processes. Several periods in which the MLR fails to account for interannual variability are treated as case studies in order to better understand variability in entry water not governed by these large scale processes.</p>


Geophysics ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. R. Lines ◽  
A. Bourgeois ◽  
J. D. Covey

Traveltimes from an offset vertical seismic profile (VSP) are used to estimate subsurface two‐dimensional dip by applying an iterative least‐squares inverse method. Tests on synthetic data demonstrate that inversion techniques are capable of estimating dips in the vicinity of a wellbore by using the traveltimes of the direct arrivals and the primary reflections. The inversion method involves a “layer stripping” approach in which the dips of the shallow layers are estimated before proceeding to estimate deeper dips. Examples demonstrate that the primary reflections become essential whenever the ratio of source offset to layer depth becomes small. Traveltime inversion also requires careful estimation of layer velocities and proper statics corrections. Aside from these difficulties and the ubiquitous nonuniqueness problem, the VSP traveltime inversion was able to produce a valid earth model for tests on a real data case.


2015 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 196-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Graziosi ◽  
J. Arduini ◽  
F. Furlani ◽  
U. Giostra ◽  
L.J.M. Kuijpers ◽  
...  

Geophysics ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weerachai Siripunvaraporn ◽  
Gary Egbert

There are currently three types of algorithms in use for regularized 2-D inversion of magnetotelluric (MT) data. All seek to minimize some functional which penalizes data misfit and model structure. With the most straight‐forward approach (exemplified by OCCAM), the minimization is accomplished using some variant on a linearized Gauss‐Newton approach. A second approach is to use a descent method [e.g., nonlinear conjugate gradients (NLCG)] to avoid the expense of constructing large matrices (e.g., the sensitivity matrix). Finally, approximate methods [e.g., rapid relaxation inversion (RRI)] have been developed which use cheaply computed approximations to the sensitivity matrix to search for a minimum of the penalty functional. Approximate approaches can be very fast, but in practice often fail to converge without significant expert user intervention. On the other hand, the more straightforward methods can be prohibitively expensive to use for even moderate‐size data sets. Here, we present a new and much more efficient variant on the OCCAM scheme. By expressing the solution as a linear combination of rows of the sensitivity matrix smoothed by the model covariance (the “representers”), we transform the linearized inverse problem from the M-dimensional model space to the N-dimensional data space. This method is referred to as DASOCC, the data space OCCAM’s inversion. Since generally N ≪ M, this transformation by itself can result in significant computational saving. More importantly the data space formulation suggests a simple approximate method for constructing the inverse solution. Since MT data are smooth and “redundant,” a subset of the representers is typically sufficient to form the model without significant loss of detail. Computations required for constructing sensitivities and the size of matrices to be inverted can be significantly reduced by this approximation. We refer to this inversion as REBOCC, the reduced basis OCCAM’s inversion. Numerical experiments on synthetic and real data sets with REBOCC, DASOCC, NLCG, RRI, and OCCAM show that REBOCC is faster than both DASOCC and NLCG, which are comparable in speed. All of these methods are significantly faster than OCCAM, but are not competitive with RRI. However, even with a simple synthetic data set, we could not always get RRI to converge to a reasonable solution. The basic idea behind REBOCC should be more broadly applicable, in particular to 3-D MT inversion.


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