Identification

Title

The Role of the middle atmosphere in simulations of the troposphere during northern hemisphere winter: Differences between high- and low-top models

Abstract

This paper compares present-day simulations made with two state-of-the-art climate models: a conventional model specifically designed to represent the tropospheric climate, which has a poorly resolved middle atmosphere, and a configuration that is built on the same physics and numerical algorithms but represents realistically the middle atmosphere and lower thermosphere. The atmospheric behavior is found to be different between the two model configurations, and it is shown that the differences in the two simulations can be attributed to differences in the behavior of the zonal mean state of the stratosphere, where reflection of quasi-stationary resolved planetary waves from the lid of the low-top model is prominent; the more realistic physics in the high-top model is not relevant. It is also shown that downward propagation of zonal wind anomalies during weak stratospheric vortex events is substantially different in the two model configurations. These findings extend earlier results that a poorly resolved stratosphere can influence simulations throughout the troposphere.

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document

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http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7cz37m9

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Dataset language

eng

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Classification of spatial data and services

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

effective date

2010-09-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2010 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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None

Responsible organisations

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contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

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