On the interaction between the stratosphere and troposphere during the warming of December 1967‐january 1968

Abstract

AbstractCalculations of the transfer of kinetic energy from the troposphere to the stratosphere by means of the pressure‐interaction term are carried out for the mid‐winter stratospheric warming of 1967‐1968. This term is computed in the wave number domain for the 100 mb level by means of the Eliassen and Palm (1960) approximation. There appears to be a distinct correlation between the stratospheric kinetic energy per wave number at the 10 mb level and the energy transfer by that wave number at the 100‐mb level. A comparison of the magnitude of the energy flux for 1963 versus that for this later warming suggests that this term is of the same order as the remaining terms in the kinetic energy equation calculated by Perry (1967). Results obtained using this approximation appear to give good agreement with those obtained by direct calculation of the vertical velocity field.