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Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate
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| Home | Initiatives | Organisation | Publications | Meetings | Acronyms and Abbreviations | Useful Links |
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Stratospheric Processes And their Role in Climate
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| Home | Initiatives | Organisation | Publications | Meetings | Acronyms and Abbreviations | Useful Links |
The structure of the tropopause and the transport and mixing of mass and chemical species between the stratosphere and troposphere both affect the role of the stratosphere in climate.
SPARC works to bring the various communities working on these issues closer together through targeted workshops and to solicit pedagogical review-type articles.
A review of research on the dynamics and transport of the lower stratosphere/upper troposphere when the project started can be found in the SPARC Implementation Plan, along with a summary of the activities and action plan of this initiative.
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Dynamical aspects of stratosphere-troposphere exchange. The tropopause is shown by the thick line. Thin lines are isentropic or constant potential temperature surfaces labelled in Kelvins. Heavily shaded region is the "lowermost stratosphere" where isentropic surfaces span the tropopause and isentropic exchange by tropopause folding occurs. The region above the 380K surface is the "overworld", in which isentropes lie entirely in the stratosphere. Light shading in the overworld denotes wave-induced forcing (the extratropical "pump"). The wiggly double headed arrows denote meridional transport by eddy motions, which include tropical upper-tropospheric troughs and their cut-off cyclones as well as their mid-latitude counterparts including folds. Not all eddy transports are shown; and the wiggly arrows are not meant to imply any two-way symmetry. The broad arrows show transport by the global-scale circulation which is driven by the extratropical pump. This global scale circulation is the primary contribution to exchange across isentropic surfaces (e.g., the ~380 K surface) that are entirely in the overworld. |
Report on the SPARC NATO Advanced Research Workshop on stratosphere-troposphere exchange,
J. R. Holton et al., Reviews of Geophysics, 33, 4, 403-439, 1995.
Report on the SPARC Stratosphere-Troposhere Exchange Workshop, 13-15 June 1995 in Pointe-du-Lac, Quebec, Canada,
T. Shepherd, SPARC Newsletter 6, January 1996.
Transport and Mixing in the Lower Stratosphere: review of recent developments,
T.Shepherd, SPARC Newsletter 9, July 1997.
The Tropical Tropopause,
G. Reid, SPARC Newsletter 11, July 1998.
Last update: March 20, 2001
