Abstract
In this article, Thorpe analysis, which often retrieves the characteristics of mixing in the free atmosphere from balloon sounding data, is applied to the data of the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate (COSMIC). We find that the COSMIC data can well retrieve the strongest mixed layer in the troposphere (SMLT) altitude, and can reveal the basic variation trend of the SMLT thickness and Thorpe scale L T . We use COSMIC data to reveal the global spatial and temporal distribution of the SMLT from 2007 to 2015 and analyze the fluctuation period of the SMLT altitude with Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT), we find that the variation of the SMLT altitude is influenced by the dual effects of terrain and solar radiation.
Highlights
Atmospheric turbulence is an important research subject in the field of Atmospheric Science
This article first proposed the concept of the strongest mixed layer in the troposphere
The sounding data was used to analyze the ability of COSMIC data to determine the characteristics of the strongest mixed layer in the troposphere (SMLT)
Summary
Atmospheric turbulence is an important research subject in the field of Atmospheric Science. In order to retrieve the characteristics of turbulence of free atmosphere from balloon sounding data, Thorpe analysis, which was originally applied to the study of ocean mixing [14,15], has been used by many references to analyze balloon sounding data [16,17,18,19,20]. Combining the refractive index and one dimensional variational method, we can get the global atmospheric temperature, pressure, humidity and ionospheric profile [25,26] After obtaining this data, we can use the Thorpe analysis to retrieve SMLT’s physical characteristics (altitude, thickness and LT ).
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