Tropospheric chemistry over the lower Great Plains of the United States. 1. Meteorology

Abstract

Convective clouds and thunderstorms inject planetary boundary layer air with high concentrations of ozone (O3) and O3 precursors into the free troposphere. By altering the chemistry and radiative balance of the upper troposphere, these local actions can have global consequences. In order to extrapolate from individual observations to general trends we have devised a method to identify weather patterns conducive to convection in the southern or lower Great Plains in early summer and applied this method to meteorological and chemical data from a series of research flights carried out in June 1985. Previous studies have noted that weather patterns in the lower Great Plains in this season are characterized by alternating pulses of polar and maritime air masses and very frequent episodes of violent convection, usually in maritime conditions in advance of a surface cold front or along the frontal zone itself. In this study, a set of selection criteria is applied to surface and upper air meteorological data from central Oklahoma to distinguish the two meridional phases characteristic of this region: maritime and polar. A deep layer of moist, southerly flow and convective instability is encountered in the maritime regime, while the polar phase is convectively stable throughout the midtroposphere and much less conducive to convection. For the period 1980–1985 both maritime and polar regimes occur with a frequency of about 35% in May, while the maritime phase becomes dominant in June (53% maritime versus 20% polar). Within the maritime regime, conditions conducive to the development of severe storms are characterized by the presence of a dry, low‐level inversion that tends to inhibit scattered midday convection over a wide region while simultaneously enhancing the probability of larger thunderstorms and mesoscale convective systems. This “modified maritime” category accounts for approximately 25% of the total cases in May and in June. The instances of frontal passage account for approximately 15% of the total cases. Profiles, from the surface to 200 mbar, made on 18 flights of the NCAR Sabreliner in the 1985 PRESTORM project, are categorized according to the selection criteria. Part 2 of this study presents representative concentrations of ozone, carbon monoxide, and reactive nitrogen compounds as a function of altitude (0–12 km) for each category and discusses the implications of these findings.