Tropospheric Effects Research Articles

THE EFFECT OF SEASONAL VARIATION ON GNSS ZENITH TROPOSPHERIC DELAY

Abstract. The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal experiences delays caused by the atmosphere, leading to the lengthening of the geometric path of the ray, commonly referred to as tropospheric delay. This delay is a significant source of error in GNSS positioning, contributing to a bias in the height component of several centimeters, even when meteorological data are simultaneously recorded and used in tropospheric models. In this study, considering seasonal variations, we investigated the impact of tropospheric delay on the GNSS height component. GNSS stations, part of the Turkish RTK CORS Network known as TUSAGA-Active (Turkish National Permanent GNSS Network Active), covered different heights over the 2014–2019 period. Daily coordinates of GNSS stations and tropospheric zenith delay were obtained through the GAMIT/GLOBK software solution.In the study, temperature, pressure, and relative humidity data of meteorological stations at different heights were converted to mean sea level. By using these values, interpolation estimates were made for the continuous GNSS stations in the same region with the IDW method. The most significant delay in GNSS signals occurs in July and August. This effect, which causes periodic changes in the zenith delay, varies inversely with the station's height. With the increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere in parallel with the rise in the temperature in the summer months, it is seen that the stations at a low height are more exposed to the tropospheric effect than the stations at higher heights. In addition, GNSS stations' reduced meteorological values (temperature, pressure and relative humidity) show that the zenith delay values changed directly proportional to the temperature and inversely proportional to the pressure and relative humidity.

Mechanics of the Kalabagh Fault, northwest Himalayan fold and thrust belt (convergence zone of India and Eurasia), using SAR interferometry and CFS

The Kalabagh strike–slip fault, which is characterized by right-lateral movement, is part of the northwestern Himalayan foreland fold and thrust belt in Pakistan. This structure marks the western and eastern terminations of the Salt Range and Surghar Ranges, respectively. No significant (>M6) earthquakes have been reported along the Kalabagh Fault in recent decades. Here, we take advantage of space-borne Sentinel-1A SAR interferometry to gain insight into the mechanics of faulting, aseismic creeping, and stress loading of the seismic cycle on the Kalabagh Fault spanning over approximately 7 years. In this study, we also removed the tropospheric effects using the Generic Atmospheric Correction Online Service data from the rate map. We further resolved the LOS deformation into both horizontal and vertical deformations. Our Bayesian inversion indicates that the fault experiences significant horizontal and vertical displacements. The fault’s southern and northern segments exhibit a creeping rate of approximately ∼4.2 ± 1.3 to 4.8 ± 1.6 mm/year, respectively, while the central section does not display any horizontal creeping. We found that the creeping is confined between 0 and ∼2.7 ± 1.1 km depth at the northern section and 0 and ∼3.9 ± 1.1 km on the southern section of the faults. Nevertheless, we found that the vertical creeping of ∼10 mm/year is confined between 0.5 and 6 km depth in the central segment of the fault. Moreover, our model does not resolve the interseismic slip at depth on the Kalabagh Fault. Our results affirm that Kalabagh Fault is creeping, and the internal deformation due to the presence of a thick salt layer over the decollement facilitates the creeping on this fault. In addition, Coulomb stress modeling depicts that the creeping on the Kalabagh Fault increases the Coulomb stress changes in the northern section of the KBF.

The mathematical weighting of GNSS observations based on different types of receivers/antennas and environmental conditions

Stochastic models play an important role in achieving high accuracy in positioning, the ideal estimator in the least-squares (LS) can be obtained only by using the suitable stochastic model. This study investigates the role of variance component estimation (VCE) in the LS method for Precise Point Positioning (PPP). This estimation is performed by considering the ionospheric-free (IF) functional model for code and the phase observation of Global Positioning System (GPS). The strategy for estimating the accuracy of these observations was evaluated to check the effect of the stochastic model in four modes: a) antenna type, b) receiver type, c) the tropospheric effect, and d) the ionosphere effect. The results show that using empirical variance for code and phase observations in some cases caused erroneous estimation of unknown components in the PPP model. This is because a constant empirical variance may not be suitable for various receivers and antennas under different conditions. Coordinates were compared in two cases using the stochastic model of nominal weight and weight estimated by LS-VCE. The position error difference for the east-west, north-south, and height components was 1.5 cm, 4 mm, and 1.8 cm, respectively. Therefore, weight estimation with LS-VCE can provide more appropriate results. Eventually, the convergence time based on four elevation-dependent models was evaluated using nominal weight and LS-VCE weight. According to the results, the LS-VCE has a higher convergence rate than the nominal weight. The weight estimation using LS-VCE improves the convergence time in four elevation-dependent models by 11, 13, 12, and 9 min, respectively.

Impact of Climate Change Parameters on Groundwater Level: Implications for Two Subsidence Regions in Iran Using Geodetic Observations and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)

This study aims to investigate how changes in meteorological indicators affect groundwater resources, and hence to predict groundwater levels using these indicators, particularly in regions experiencing drought and subsidence. Precipitation, temperature, evapotranspiration and precipitable water vapor (PWV) are important meteorological parameters to predict groundwater levels. Two subsidence areas with different weather conditions were selected to conduct a comprehensive study on the effect of temperature and precipitation on groundwater level changes. The correct locations of the two subsidence areas were determined by analyzing Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) images of Sentinel-1A using the small baseline subset algorithm. The interferograms were processed to correct tropospheric effects using the advanced integration method. Specifying the exact locations of the two areas, the meteorological parameters were downscaled using the Statistical DownScaling Model (SDSM), synoptic observations, meteorological data, and the General Circulation Model (GCM). An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was then employed to predict the groundwater level changes as a function of meteorological data, including Global Positioning System (GPS)-based PWV and the evapotranspiration index. The trained ANN, along with the downscaled meteorological indicators, was used to predict groundwater level changes over two time periods. In the first period, the prediction was performed over the current years to investigate the performance of the method using the available data, whereas in the second period, the prediction was performed for the coming years, up until 2030. The results confirmed the high performance of the prediction algorithm, and the importance of including PWV and evapotranspiration in groundwater level predictions. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to check the relationship between groundwater level changes and meteorological variables. The statistical significance of these coefficients was tested at the significance level α=0.05. In more than 80% of the cases, the correlation coefficients were statistically significant, reaching more than 0.70 in some of the months. It is also observed that an increase in the depth of groundwater level has an obvious relationship with an increase in temperature and a decrease in rainfall.

Assessment of SIRGAS-CON tropospheric products using ERA5 and IGS

Abstract Zenith Tropospheric Delays (ZTDs) are used to correct tropospheric effects that cause a delay in the signal measured by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers and obtain accurate measurements. ZTD can be estimated from GNSS processing, which means they may suffer from occasional or systematic errors. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the quality and stability of these data over time, since ZTDs are used in several applications that require centimeter precision. Within this context, this work aims to assess the available ZTD of the whole Geodetic Reference System for the Americas Continuously Operating Network (SIRGAS-CON), consisting of 467 stations, spanning the period from January 2014 to December 2020 using the most recent Numerical Weather Model ERA5 from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and common stations to the International GNSS Service (IGS) for an intercomparison. Results show that 10% of the stations present some instability, such as periods of highly dispersed data or discontinuities, with more occurrence in stations located in Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia. The remaining 90% proved to have stable and reliable ZTD, both in comparison with ERA5 and IGS.

Cloud adjustments from large-scale smoke–circulation interactions strongly modulate the southeastern Atlantic stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition

Abstract. Smoke from southern Africa blankets the southeastern Atlantic Ocean from June to October, producing strong and competing aerosol radiative effects. Smoke effects on the transition between overcast stratocumulus and scattered cumulus clouds are investigated along a Lagrangian (air-mass-following) trajectory in regional climate and large eddy simulation models. Results are compared with observations from three recent field campaigns that took place in August 2017: ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS (ORACLES), CLouds and Aerosol Radiative Impacts and Forcing: Year 2017 (CLARIFY), and Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds (LASIC). The case study is set up around the joint ORACLES–CLARIFY flight that took place near Ascension Island on 18 August 2017. Smoke sampled upstream on an ORACLES flight on 15 August 2017 likely entrained into the marine boundary layer later sampled during the joint flight. The case is first simulated with the WRF-CAM5 regional climate model in three distinct setups: (1) FireOn, in which smoke emissions and any resulting smoke–cloud–radiation interactions are included; (2) FireOff, in which no smoke emissions are included; (3) RadOff, in which smoke emissions and their microphysical effects are included but aerosol does not interact directly with radiation. Over the course of the Lagrangian trajectory, differences in free tropospheric thermodynamic properties between FireOn and FireOff are nearly identical to those between FireOn and RadOff, showing that aerosol–radiation interactions are primarily responsible for the free tropospheric effects. These effects are non-intuitive: in addition to the expected heating within the core of the smoke plume, there is also a “banding” effect of cooler temperature (∼1–2 K) and greatly enhanced moisture (>2 g kg−1) at the plume top. This banding effect is caused by a vertical displacement of the former continental boundary layer in the free troposphere in the FireOn simulation resulting from anomalous diabatic heating due to smoke absorption of sunlight that manifests primarily as a few hundred meters per day reduction in large-scale subsidence over the ocean. A large eddy simulation (LES) is then forced with free tropospheric fields taken from the outputs for the WRF-CAM5 FireOn and FireOff runs. Cases are run by selectively perturbing one variable (e.g., aerosol number concentration, temperature, moisture, vertical velocity) at a time to better understand the contributions from different indirect (microphysical), “large-scale” semi-direct (above-cloud thermodynamic and subsidence changes), and “local” semi-direct (below-cloud smoke absorption) effects. Despite a more than 5-fold increase in cloud droplet number concentration when including smoke aerosol concentrations, minimal differences in cloud fraction evolution are simulated by the LES when comparing the base case with a perturbed aerosol case with identical thermodynamic and dynamic forcings. A factor of 2 decrease in background free tropospheric aerosol concentrations from the FireOff simulation shifts the cloud evolution from a classical entrainment-driven “deepening–warming” transition to trade cumulus to a precipitation-driven “drizzle-depletion” transition to open cells, however. The thermodynamic and dynamic changes caused by the WRF-simulated large-scale adjustments to smoke diabatic heating strongly influence cloud evolution in terms of both the rate of deepening (especially for changes in the inversion temperature jump and in subsidence) and in cloud fraction on the final day of the simulation (especially for the moisture “banding” effect). Such large-scale semi-direct effects would not have been possible to simulate using a small-domain LES model alone.

Comparative evaluation and analysis of different tropospheric delay models in Ghana

Tropospheric delay prediction models have become increasingly important in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) as they play a critical role in GNSS positioning applications. Due to the different atmospheric conditions over the earth regions, tropospheric effect on GNSS signals also differs, influencing the performance of these prediction models. Thus, the choice of a particular prediction model can significantly degrade the positioning accuracy especially when the model does not suit the user’s environs. Therefore, a performance assessment of existing prediction models in various regions for a suitable one is very imperative. This paper evaluates and analyses seven commonly used tropospheric delay models in Ghana in terms of performances in Zenith Tropospheric Delay (ZTD) estimation and baseline positional accuracies using data from six selected Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS). The 1˚x1˚ gridded Vienna Mapping Functions 3 (VMF3) ZTD product and coordinates solutions from the CSRS-PPP positioning service were respectively used as references. The results show that the Black model performed better in estimating the ZTD, followed by Askne and Nordius model. The Saastamoinen, Marini and Murray, Niell, Goads and Goodman and Hopfield models respectively performed poorly. However, the result of the baseline solutions did not show much variation in the coordinate difference provided by the use of the prediction models, nonetheless, the Black and Askne and Nordius models continue to dominate the other models. Of all the models evaluated, either Black or Askne and Nordius model is recommended for use to mitigate the ZTD in the study area, however, the choice of the Black model will be more desirable.

EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF THE ACCURACY OF DETERMINING THE NORMAL HEIGHTS OF POINTS ACCORDING TO GNSS OBSERVATIONS

The article considers the issue of determining the absolute coordinates of points usingmodern geodetic technologies. The list of networks of active reference stations of Ukraine thattransmit differential corrections has been updated. The article presents the results of experimentalverification of the accuracy of normal altitudes using dual-frequency GNSS ‒ receivers in RTK modebased on a stable network of leveling points located at the geodetic research site of the PoltavaGravimetric Observatory. The satellite data was transmitted through the Poltava Base PermanentStation (POLV), located on the territory of the geodetic landfill. The observations were based onSystem.net network. Determination of the quantitative characteristics of the vertical dynamics of thebenchmarks under the action of local hydrothermal factors was carried out relative to a stablebenchmark with a depth of 6 m geometric leveling using a level H-05. The normal heights of thepoints according to which further research was performed were adjusted in April 2021. The followingresults were obtained in the research: 21 % of measurements have gross deviations, 47 % - withinacceptable limits, 32 % of measurements have high geodetic accuracy. It was found that the use ofnetwork RTK has a number of advantages, such as ease and speed of removal, versatility and cost effectiveness, the ability to work in almost anywhere in Ukraine. However, gross deviations are likelyto occur due to a number of factors, such as ephemeris and time errors, satellite configurationgeometry, multipath, ionospheric and troposphere effects, and so on. The conditions of effective useof satellite geodetic receivers are investigated. It is noted that the use of GPS / GNSS receivers islimited in populated areas due to poor image quality. In built-up areas, the method of geometricleveling remains the most accurate for determining the heights of points.It is noted that today in Ukraine there is no current normative and instructive document, whichcontains provisions for the use of the latest geodetic technologies.

Tropospheric ozone effect on yield, quality and antioxidant defence of six cultivars of jute with ethylene diurea in the lower Gangetic Plains of India

Tropospheric ozone effect on yield, quality and antioxidant defence of six cultivars of jute with ethylene diurea in the lower Gangetic Plains of India

Flight-Test Evaluation of Integer Ambiguity Resolution Enabled PPP

The technology of integer ambiguity resolution-enabled precise-point-positioning (also referred to as PPP-AR) has been proven capable of providing comparable accuracy, efficiency, and productivity to long-baseline real-time kinematic positioning (RTK) during the last decade. Commercial PPP-AR services have been provided by different institutions and companies and have been widely used in geodetic missions. However, the usage and research of the PPP-AR mostly concentrated on nonaviation applications, e.g., vehicle navigation, surveying, and mapping, and monitoring crustal motions. Few of them focused on fixing the ambiguities during an aircraft flight. In this contribution, we implemented the PPP-AR technique for the first time in an airplane flight test to investigate how much the fixed ambiguities could contribute to airplane positioning solutions in challenging circumstances, including high velocity and severe maneuvers. We first looked into the influences of the tropospheric delay on the positioning and ambiguity solutions because the height of the airplane may dramatically change within a narrow time span, and thus, a proper constraint of this parameter was crucial for the computation of the tropospheric effects. Then, how to fix the ambiguities successfully and reliably in challenging circumstances was discussed. Finally, the airplane data was processed in 15 and 1s intervals with ambiguity float and fixed solutions under different configurations to illustrate in which condition and to what extent the fixed ambiguities can improve the airplane positioning accuracy.

Estimating Station Specific Zenith Tropospheric Delay in a Local GPS Network from Observed Surface Meteorology

The total zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD) is an important parameter of the atmosphere which directly or indirectly give reflection of the atmospheric condition in a local GPS network. The use of the global tropospheric models such as the Saastamoinen model, Hopfield model, Neil model etc in estimating the tropospheric effects at the local level leaves much to be desired. These models are derived using data from available radiosonde obtained from Europe and North America continents. The global atmospheric condition used as constants in these models provides a broad approximation of the tropospheric conditions, but ignores the actual atmospheric conditions on a given location i.e. do not take into account the latitudinal and seasonal variations in the atmosphere. It is necessary to assess the effects of the troposphere on geodetic measurements based on ground meteorological measurements including temperature, pressure, and relative humidity. Daily RINEX GPS data from eight (8) Malaysian Real Time Kinematic GPS Network (MyRTKnet) stations in Southern Malaysia from year 2006 to June 2008 thus; covering 2½ years were processed. A computer program for modelling 2½ years of local meteorology within the network was developed and called MetMOD, similarly a program, call SaastroMOD was developed to estimate the local zenith hydrostatic delay. The results showed that, the estimated local tropospheric delay considered the temporal and spatial variation of the network thus; giving true reflection of the tropospheric delay in a local GPS network as against the standard atmosphere which ignores the actual local condition with a standard deviation of 0.18 m having a maximum zenith tropospheric delay (ZTD) of about 2.6 m. The best zenith hydrostatic delay (ZHD) comes from station JHJY with a standard deviation of 0.353 cm, while the best zenith wet delay (ZWD) comes from station TGRH with a standard deviation of 5.943 cm. The models show that, while parameters evolved for ZHD are constant at different locations, however, those parameters evolved for ZWD show significant variations from one location to the other. Hence then use of the local meteorological parameter in modelling tropospheric delay improves GPS positional accuracy.

Martian Lander Radio Science Data Calibration for Mars Troposphere

AbstractThe tropospheric propagation effect is one of several sources of error in radio science measurements. Systematically calibrated for the Earth troposphere disturbances, the ranging and Doppler data provided by the Martian landers have not been corrected so far for Mars troposphere effects. These effects were considered negligible because the Mars atmosphere is a hundred times less dense than that of the Earth. The constantly improving lander data accuracy and the challenging science objectives of the InSight‐Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) and ExoMars‐2022‐LaRa radio science experiments motivated this work. We propose here a simple model to compute the Mars troposphere errors affecting a radio wave transponded from the surface of Mars. The troposphere zenithal delay is first derived from the surface pressure at the lander location. We use a mapping function to infer the slant delay (range errors) induced by the troposphere of Mars. Being proportional to range rates, the contribution of Mars troposphere to the Doppler measurements is derived from the slant delays. Using our model, an elevation threshold of 15° above the lander is identified, below which the Doppler data should be calibrated for Mars troposphere. When applied to the X‐band Doppler data from Mars surface missions, the model predicts significant Mars troposphere contribution for less than 1% of RISE data, 2% of Opportunity data, and 2.5% of Pathfinder data. Among these tracking passes, some are strongly affected by the troposphere of Mars, with Doppler errors reaching sometimes more than 3 times the nominal noise level (>10 mHz at 60 s integration time).

Optimizing Global Navigation Satellite Systems network real-time kinematic infrastructure for homogeneous positioning performance from the perspective of tropospheric effects.

Real-time centimetre-level precise positioning from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) is critical for activities including landslide, glacier and coastal erosion monitoring, flood modelling, precision agriculture, intelligent transport systems, autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things. This may be achieved via the real-time kinematic (RTK) GNSS approach, which uses a single receiver and a network of continuously operating GNSS reference stations (CORS). However, existing CORS networks have often been established simply by attempting regular spacing or in clusters around cities, with little consideration of weather, climate and topography effects, which influence the GNSS tropospheric delay, a substantial GNSS positional error and which prevents homogeneous RTK accuracy attainment. Here, we develop a framework towards optimizing the design of CORS ground infrastructure, such that tropospheric delay errors reduce to 1.5 mm worth of precipitable water vapour (PWV) globally. We obtain average optimal station spacings of 52 km in local summer and 70 km in local winter, inversely related to the atmospheric PWV variation, with denser networks typically required in the tropics and in mountainous areas. We also consider local CORS network infrastructure case studies, showing how after network modification interpolated PWV errors can be reduced from around 2.7 to 1.4 mm.

On Combining Attenuation Statistics of Different Tropospheric Effects Affecting EHF Earth–Space Links

On Combining Attenuation Statistics of Different Tropospheric Effects Affecting EHF Earth–Space Links

Atmospheric phase screen estimation for land subsidence evaluation by InSAR time series analysis in Kurdistan, Iran

Atmospheric phase screen (APS) is one of the main error sources of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) measurements. In order to accurately retrieve displacement fields, it is necessary to use advanced methods to eliminate the tropospheric effect of interferograms. In this paper, the land subsidence in Kurdistan province of Iran is investigated using Sentinel-1A acquisitions on a single track for the period 2014–2018. The accurate and applicable 3D ray tracing technique is used to accurately estimate the APS. The ERA-I reanalysis data generated by European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are used to implement the 3D ray tracing technique. In order to determine the effect of using the 3D ray tracing technique, the APSs are also determined using a traditional approach called, spatiotemporal filters method. To evaluate the capability of the two methods, the results are compared with the weather research and forecasting model (WRF) model. Finally, the interferograms are corrected using APSs from 3D ray tracing technique and traditional method and the subsidence rate in the study area is computed. Comparing the subsidence rates obtained from two APS estimation methods with piezometric data, GPS and precise levelling observations shows that the 3D ray tracing technique is significantly more accurate than traditional method in computing InSAR displacement fields.

Effect of Humidity on Tropospheric Received Signal Strength (RSS) in Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) Band

The variation of weather conditions can affect the performance and quality of a communication system and sensor network. Therefore, it is vital to explore the factors that influence the quality of the radio signal to adapt to weather conditions. This paper describes the tropospheric effect of the meteorological parameter (humidity) for Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band at KUSZA Observatory (KO), UniSZA, Terengganu. Received signal strength (RSS) and humidity were collected using spectrum analyser and weather station respectively for 24 hours in a rainy and a sunny day. Statistical analysis was used to determine the relationship between humidity and RSS. The results show that variation in humidity conditions give RSS with negative correlations in both conditions. The correlation of the RSS and humidity at both observation days (rr=correlation of frequencies on rainy day, rs = correlation of frequencies on sunny day) for frequency 382.5 MHz (rr=-0.423, rs=-0.382), while for frequency 945 MHz (rr = -0.512, rs=-0.631), frequency 1867.5 MHz (rr=-0.588, rs=-0.669) and frequency 2160 MHz (rr = -0.509 rs=-0.805). This study will benefit the active spectrum users such as mobile telecommunications, wireless signal, satellite transmission TV and radio astronomy expert in the management of radio frequency interference (RFI) for the observation and monitoring of the radio signal transmission.

English

Rain-induced depolarization impairments have been a constraint on the effective use of satellite communication systems at millimetre wave band especially in the tropical regions like Nigeria. This region often experiences high and varying degree of rainfall intensity accompanied with large raindrops due to distortion of raindrops when dual orthogonal polarization is employed to double the channel capacity without increasing the bandwidth. This paper examines the performance of five cross polarization discrimination (XPD) models at millimetre wavelengths over ten (10) different locations in Nigeria using five years climatological data acquired from Tropospheric Observatory Data Acquisition Network (TRODAN) of the Centre for Atmospheric Research (CAR). The performance of five different XPD models namely: recent ITU-R 618-15, old ITU-R-722, SIM, CHU and DHW were tested based on the level of estimated interference due to tropospheric effects. The results revealed that at Ku-band uplink/downlink frequencies (10/14 GHz), the unwanted signals will completely overshadow the co-polarized signal between 0.001 and 0.018% of time for the new ITU-R model at Jos, Yola, Sokoto and Nsukka. However, at fade level between 8.93 and 11.08 dB, the crosstalk is prevalent at the receiving station. Though, the recent ITU-R model received wider acceptance, the performance in this study is ranked the lowest while SIM model displayed the best performance. The study therefore recommends, SIM model as the most preferred model to be adopted in estimating depolarization in this region. However, further experimental data for validation is suggested to substantiate this assertion. Key words: Millimeter waves, cross polarization discrimination (XPD) models, co-polar attenuation, earth-space paths, tropical region.

The Role of Oceanic Processes in the Initiation of Boreal Winter Intraseasonal Oscillations Over the Indian Ocean

AbstractObservational analyses and ocean general circulation model experiments were performed to understand the influence of oceanic processes on warm sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) prior to convection initiation of boreal winter intraseasonal oscillations (ISOs), including the Madden‐Julian Oscillation (MJO), in the tropical Indian Ocean. We found 39 strong ISOs that passed over the Indian Ocean Warm Pool (WP) region during the November–April season of the 2001–2012 period. Seventeen of them (44%) initiated over the Seychelles‐Chagos Thermocline Ridge (SCTR) before propagating eastward to the WP and Maritime Continent. Including only global‐scale MJOs, 71% (24%) of the remaining MJO events initiated from the SCTR (WP). Four (seven) SCTR (WP) ISO events were preceded by SSTAs that were strongly influenced by wind stress‐driven oceanic processes; all four (2/7) SCTR (WP) events were MJOs. Composite analyses of the four oceanic process influenced SCTR MJO events showed that wind stress‐driven oceanic processes contributed about 30% (between 0.1 and 0.2 °C) of the preconvection warming in the SCTR, which coincides with the Intertropical Convergence Zone with mean SST > 28 °C. Reduced upwelling and entrainment played a more important role than horizontal advection in elevating the +SSTAs. Case studies revealed that the two ocean process‐influenced primary MJO SCTR events were also associated with oceanic equatorial Rossby waves. Furthermore, results of a linear atmospheric mixed layer model indicated that boundary layer processes related to SSTAs contributed approximately half of the total convergence during MJO initiation, relative to the effect of the free troposphere, for the Rossby wave‐influenced events.

Atmospheric Circulation Response to Short-Term Arctic Warming in an Idealized Model

Abstract Recent Arctic sea ice loss in fall has been posited to drive midlatitude circulation changes into winter and even spring. Past work has shown that sea ice loss can indeed trigger a weakening of the stratospheric polar vortex, which can lead to delayed surface weather changes. But the mechanisms of such changes and their relevant time scales have remained unclear. This study uses large ensembles of idealized GCM simulations to identify how and over what time scales the atmospheric circulation responds to short-term surface heat flux changes in high latitudes. The ensemble-mean response of the atmospheric circulation is approximately linear in the amplitude of the surface forcing. It is also insensitive to whether the forcing is zonally asymmetric or symmetric, that is, whether stationary waves are generated or not. The circulation response can be decomposed into a rapid thermal response and a slower dynamic adjustment. The adjustment arises through weakening of vertical wave activity fluxes from the troposphere into the stratosphere in response to polar warming, a mechanism that differs from sudden stratospheric warmings yet still results in a weakened stratospheric circulation. The stratospheric response is delayed and persists for about 2 months because the thermal response of the stratosphere is slow compared with that of the troposphere. The delayed stratospheric response feeds back onto the troposphere, but the tropospheric effects are weak compared with natural variability. The general pathway for the delayed response appears to be relatively independent of the atmospheric background state at the time of the anomalous surface forcing.

A Look at the Relationship between the Large-Scale Tropospheric Static Stability and the Tropical Cyclone Maximum Intensity

AbstractVarious modeling and observational studies have suggested that tropical cyclone (TC) intensity tends to increase in the future due to projected warmer sea surface temperature (SST). This study examines the effects of the tropospheric stratification that could potentially offset the direct increase of TC intensity associated with the warmer SST. Using reanalysis datasets and TC records in the northwestern Pacific and the North Atlantic basins, it is shown that there exists a consistently negative correlation between the annually averaged TC intensity and the basinwide average of the tropospheric static stability. This negative correlation is more robust in the northwestern Pacific basin when using the TC lifetime maximum intensity but is somewhat less significant in the North Atlantic basin. Further separation of the troposphere into a lower (1000–500 hPa) and an upper layer (500–200 hPa) reveals that it is the upper-tropospheric static stability that plays a more dominant role in governing the TC intensity variability. The negating effects of a stable troposphere on TC intensity as found in this study suggest a partial offset of the projected increase in the TC potential intensity due to the future warmer SST. Thus, the tropospheric static stability is one of the key large-scale factors that need to be properly taken into account in studies of long-term TC intensity change.