Continuous rise of the tropopause in the Northern Hemisphere over 1980–2020

Meng, Lingyun; Liu, Jane; Tarasick, D. W.; Randel, William J.; Steiner, Andrea; Wilhelmsen, Hallgeir; Wang, Lei; Haimberger, Leopold

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abi8065

Cited by 47 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 74 publications

(121 reference statements)

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“…According to Meng et al (2021) the highest trend of LRT height is covering latitudinal band 30°N to 40°N and this possibly caused by the tropical widening and subtropical jet poleward shift over the past four decades (Staten et al, 2018), showing high agreement with our findings. In case of ERA5, there is no significant expansion or contraction at both hemispheres.…”

Section: Subjective Criterion For Telsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…In recent years, monitoring the tropopause has received an increased attention for climate change studies. Many studies signified the tropopause rise as a result of the troposphere warming caused by the increase of the GHGs emissions in the atmosphere (Meng et al, 2021;Pisoft et al, 2021). The tropopause characteristics are important for the understanding of the exchange of troposphere-stratosphere (Holton et al, 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Determination of Tropical Belt Widening Using Multiple GNSS Radio Occultation Measurements

Darrag

Jin

Calabia

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. In the last decades, Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have provided an exceptional opportunity to retrieve atmospheric parameters globally through GNSS radio occultation (GNSS-RO). In this paper, data of 12 GNSS-RO missions from June 2001 to November 2020 with high resolution were used to investigate the possible widening of the tropical belt along with the probable drivers and impacts in both hemispheres. Applying both lapse rate tropopause (LRT) and cold point tropopause (CPT) definitions, the global tropopause height shows increase of approximately 36 m/decade and 60 m/decade, respectively. Moreover, the tropical edge latitude (TEL) estimated based on two tropopause height metrics, in the northern hemisphere (NH) and southern hemisphere (SH), are different from each other. For the first metric, subjective method, the tropical width from GNSS has expansion behavior in NH with ~ 0.41°/decade and a minor expansion in SH with ~ 0.08°/decade. In case of ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) there is no significant contraction in both NH and SH. For Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), there are expansion behavior in NH with ~ 0.34°/decade and strong contraction in SH with ~ −0.48°/decade. Using the second metric, objective method, the tropical width from GNSS has expansion in NH with ~ 0.13°/decade, and no significant expansion in SH. In case of ERA5, there is no significant signal in NH while SH has a minor contraction. AIRS has an expansion with ~ 0.13°/decade in NH, and strong contraction in SH with ~ −0.37°/decade. The variability of tropopause parameters (temperature and height) is maximum around the TEL locations at both hemispheres. The total column ozone (TCO) shows increasing rates globally, and the rate of increase at the SH is higher than that of the NH. There is a good agreement between the spatial and temporal patterns of TCO variability and the TEL location estimated from GNSS LRT height. Carbon dioxide (CO2), and Methane (CH4), the most important greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the main drivers of global warming, have a global increasing rate and the increasing rate of the NH is similar to that of the SH. The spatial pattern in the NH is located more pole ward than its equivalent at the SH. Both surface temperature and precipitation increase in time and have strong correlation with GNSS LRT height. Both show higher increasing rates at the NH, while the precipitation at the SH has slight decrease and the surface temperature increases. The surface temperature shows a spatial pattern with strong variability, which broadly agrees with the TEL locations. The spatial pattern of precipitation shows northward occurrence. In addition, Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) has no direct connection with the TEL behavior.

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Section: Subjective Criterion For Telsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determination of Tropical Belt Widening Using Multiple GNSS Radio Occultation Measurements

Darrag

Jin

Calabia

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…We use standard ordinary‐least‐squares (OLS) regression and fit a linear trend, intercept and the multivariate ENSO index (MEI, Wolter & Timlin, 1993) version 2. Similar principles have been used in analysis of global temperatures (e.g., Foster & Rahmstorf, 2011) and tropopause height (Meng et al., 2021). The linear trend captures WCH tendencies regardless of the cause, and our dWCH/dMEI captures variations that correspond instantaneously to multivariate ENSO index (MEI), again regardless of mechanism.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Satellites Suggest Rising Tropical High Cloud Altitude: 2002–2021

Richardson

Roy

Lebsock

2022

Geophysical Research Letters

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Warming commonly causes high clouds to rise in cloud-resolving models (e.g., Kuang & Hartmann, 2007) and Global Climate Models (e.g., Soden & Vecchi, 2011). All else being fixed, increased cloud top height amplifies warming by suppressing changes in cloud top longwave radiative cooling to space. Furthermore, clouds respond to the detailed spatial structure of temperature and dynamical changes (Andrews et al., 2015;Su et al., 2017;Zhou et al., 2016), so responses to internal variability, such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and longterm climate change may differ. It is desirable to distinguish between such changes to comprehensively evaluate observed cloud-height changes and model performance. To that end, here we use the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites to simultaneously diagnose the linear trend and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-correlated response of high-altitude cloud heights.The canonical fixed anvil temperature (FAT, Hartmann & Larson, 2002) hypothesis is that the altitude of maximum radiative cooling by water vapor in clear-sky conditions rises under warming as governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, thereby driving anvil outflow at those levels (Boucher et al., 2013). However, full-physics climate models (Zelinka & Hartmann, 2010) and cloud-resolving models (Seeley et al., 2019) support a Proportionally Higher Anvil Temperature (PHAT) behavior where anvil clouds warm, albeit by less than the surface. Observational evidence links a warmer surface to higher cloud altitudes, although this is often limited to interannual variation rather than trends (e.g., Igel et al., 2014).High-cloud feedback also depends on changes in cloud fraction (CF) and optical depth. Multiple factors can change simultaneously, for example, some models show increased altitude and reduced fraction of tropical high clouds under warming (Bony et al., 2016;Cronin & Wing, 2017). A long-running hypothesis has been a

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“…In addition, regional mean vertical motion was significantly enhanced in the lower troposphere (Figure S2 in Supporting Information ). Previous studies have indicated that both the tropopause and the boundary layer exhibit obvious increases and that the increasing height of the boundary layer is related to the extent of surface warming (Lin et al., 2017; Lorenz & DeWeaver, 2007; Meng et al., 2021). Furthermore, Zhao et al.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, regional mean vertical motion was significantly enhanced in the lower troposphere (Figure S2 in Supporting Information S1). Previous studies have indicated that both the tropopause and the boundary layer exhibit obvious increases and that the increasing height of the boundary layer is related to the extent of surface warming (Lin et al, 2017;Lorenz & DeWeaver, 2007;Meng et al, 2021). Furthermore, Zhao et al (2012) indicated that the increased soil moisture resulted in increased evapotranspiration and surface cooling, followed by asymmetrical surface warming, which altered the regional wind fields and enhanced the ascending motion in the low troposphere.…”

Section: Mechanism Of Increasing Precipitation Produced By Internal M...mentioning

confidence: 98%

Contribution of the Precipitation‐Recycling Process to the Wetting Trend in Xinjiang, China

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2022

JGR Atmospheres

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Xinjiang is located in inner Eurasia and is characterized by a typical mountain-basin system composed of "Three Mountains and Two Basins" (Figure 1). Its unique geographic location and topographic features result in a typical arid and semiarid climate that is highly sensitive to global climate change (Wu et al., 2010;Zhao et al., 2010). From the mid-1980s to 2000, the average annual air temperature increased by 0.7°C compared to that measured from 1961 to the mid-1980s in northwest China (Shi et al., 2006;Yao, Chen, Yu, et al., 2020); this increase is much higher than the global average increase of approximately 0.2°C (Shi et al., 2006;L. Wang et al., 2020). In an interesting phenomenon observed in northwest China, the regional climate changed from warm-dry to warm-wet conditions in the mid-1980s under the background of global warming (B.

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Continuous rise of the tropopause in the Northern Hemisphere over 1980–2020

Abstract: Continued rise of the tropopause after 2000 in the Northern Hemisphere is mainly due to tropospheric warming.

Cited by 47 publications

References 74 publications

Determination of Tropical Belt Widening Using Multiple GNSS Radio Occultation Measurements

Determination of Tropical Belt Widening Using Multiple GNSS Radio Occultation Measurements

Satellites Suggest Rising Tropical High Cloud Altitude: 2002–2021

Contribution of the Precipitation‐Recycling Process to the Wetting Trend in Xinjiang, China

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