Abstract
Water vapor (WV) has a vital effect on global climate change. Using satellite data observed by AURA/MLS and ERA-Interim reanalysis datasets, the spatial distributions and temporal variations of WV were analyzed. It was found that high WV content in the UTLS over the southern Tibetan Plateau is more apparent in summer, due to monsoon-induced strong upward motions. The WV content showed the opposite distribution at 100 hPa, though, during spring and winter. And a different distribution at 121 hPa indicated that the difference in WV content between the northern and southern plateau occurs between 121 and 100 hPa in spring and between 147 and 121 hPa in winter. In the UTLS, it diminishes rapidly with increase in altitude in these two seasons, and it shows a “V” structure in winter. There has been a weak increasing trend in WV at 100 hPa, but a downtrend at 147 and 215 hPa, during the past 12 years. At the latter two heights, the WV content in summer has been much higher than in other seasons. Furthermore, WV variation showed a rough wave structure in spring and autumn at 215 hPa. The variation of WV over the Tibetan Plateau is helpful in understanding the stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE) and climate change.
Highlights
Water—as solid, liquid, and gas—is one of the most important components of the earth
This study focused on the long-term trends and distributions of water vapor (WV) in the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere (UTLS) over the Tibetan Plateau, obtained from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on board the AURA Earth Observing System satellite (EOS)
It is necessary to note that heights of 215, 147, and 100 hPa over the Tibetan Plateau were selected to represent the UTLS in this study, partly because the effective height of MLS observations starts at 316 hPa [35], and partly because these three levels correspond to the UTLS region near the tropopause [39]
Summary
Water—as solid, liquid, and gas—is one of the most important components of the earth. Randel and Park [20] found that anticyclonic circulation and convection coupling had an important influence on the distribution of upper tropospheric chemical compositions during the Asian summer monsoon period, and there was an abnormal distribution of WV within the anticyclonic circulation, while Jackson et al [21, 22] pointed out that the highest WV content in the lower stratosphere appeared over the Tibetan Plateau, not over the monsoon regions. Studying the distribution of water vapor content in the UTLS region of the Tibetan Plateau has great significance and could be very helpful in understanding the STE exchange over the plateau and in comprehending the influence of UTLS vapor on the global climate. This study focused on the long-term trends and distributions of WV in the UTLS over the Tibetan Plateau, obtained from the MLS instrument on board the AURA Earth Observing System satellite (EOS)
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