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Climatology of Wave Breaking and Mixing in the Northern Hemisphere Summer Stratosphere
Climatology of Wave Breaking and Mixing in the Northern Hemisphere Summer Stratosphere Author:Richard E. Wagner This is a AIR FORCE INST OF TECH WRIGHT-PATTERSONAFB OH report procured by the Pentagon and made available for public release. It has been reproduced in the best form available to the Pentagon. It is not spiral-bound, but rather assembled with Velobinding in a soft, white linen cover. The Storming Media report number is A624663. The abstract pro... more »vided by the Pentagon follows: The cause of large zonal ozone variations observed by POAM II (Polar Ozone and Aerosol Measurement II) in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) summer stratosphere between 55N-65N and 20-30 km is investigated using the United Kingdom Meteorological Office stratospheric data set with time-mean anomalies removed. This study tests the hypothesis from Hoppel et al. 1999 that breaking of westward- propagating planetary waves in the region of maximum ozone variance (RMV) induces substantial meridional transport which is responsible for the observed ozone variance. EP-flux vectors show that wave activity propagates vertically from source regions in the lower midlatitude troposphere into the stratosphere and RMV during the NH summer. In the RMV, EP-flux divergence is clearly nonzero, which means the zonal- mean zonal flow is forced by waves in this region. Close examination of individual zonal wavenumber contributions to the climatological monthly-mean EP-flux divergence shows that wavenumbers 1-5 generally account for over 90% of the forcing of the zonal- mean flow in the RMV from June to August.« less