Identification

Title

Low-ozone bubbles observed in the tropical tropopause layer during the TC4 campaign in 2007

Abstract

In the summer of 2007, the NASA DC-8 aircraft took part in the Tropical Composition, Cloud and Climate Coupling campaign based in San Jose, Costa Rica. During this campaign, multiple in situ and remote-sensing instruments aboard the aircraft measured the atmospheric composition of the tropical tropopause layer (TTL) in the equatorial region around Central and South America. During the 17 July flight off the Ecuadorian coast, well-defined "bubbles" of anomalously low-ozone concentration (less than 75 ppbv) were detected above the aircraft in the TTL at the altitude near 365 K (between 14 and 16 km) and at ~3°S and ~82°W. Backward trajectories from meteorological analyses and the aircraft in situ measurements suggest that the ozone-depleted air mass originated from deep convection in the equatorial eastern Pacific and/or Panama Bight regions at least 5 days before observation by the DC-8; this was not a feature produced by local convection. Given uncertainties known in regard to trajectories calculated from global reanalysis, it is not possible to identify the exact convective system that produced this particular low-ozone anomaly, but only the general origin from a region of high convective activity. However, the fact that the feature apparently maintained its coherency for at least 5 days suggests a significant contribution to the chemical composition of the tropical upper troposphere portion of the TTL from convective systems followed by quasi-horizontal transport. It also suggests that mixing time scales for these relatively small spatial features are greater than 5 days.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d78k79j1

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

2010-09-10T00:00:00Z

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