Resolution Dependence of the Tropopause Inversion Layer in an Idealized Model for Upper-Tropospheric Anticyclones

Abstract

Abstract This note investigates the dependence of the extratropical tropopause inversion layer (TIL) on numerical resolution in an idealized modeling framework. Axisymmetric upper-tropospheric anticyclones are constructed by specifying potential vorticity (PV) and solving the nonlinear PV-inversion problem. The PV distribution has a smooth but near-discontinuous change of PV across the tropopause in a transition zone with vertical depth δ. For fixed δ the strength of the TIL changes with changing resolution until the transition zone is resolved by a fairly large number of grid points. The quality-controlled numerical solutions are used to study the behavior for δ → 0. This limit can lead to very strong TILs, but no indications for divergent behavior were found.