Identification

Title

Use of airborne in situ VOC measurements to estimate transit time spectrum: An observation-based diagnostic of convective transport

Abstract

Convective transport from the marine boundary layer to the upper troposphere (UT) is investigated using airborne in situ measurements of chemical species over the tropical western Pacific. Using 42 volatile organic compounds with photochemical lifetimes ranging from shorter than a day to multiple decades, we derive a transit time spectrum G(t) and the associated modal and mean transit times for the UT air mass over the convectively dominant tropical western Pacific region. G(t) describes relative contributions of air masses transported from the marine boundary layer to the UT via all transport paths with different transit times. We further demonstrate that the volatile organic compound-derived transit time scale is broadly comparable to that estimated from convective mass flux. The observation-based transit time spectrum not only provides insights into convective transport pathways, but also has the potential to serve as an effective diagnostic for evaluating the representation of convective transport in global models.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d74m97j2

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-12-16T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

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

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact