Category Archives: News

Science Update: 6-12 June

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).

The impact of overshooting deep convection on local transport and mixing in the tropical upper troposphere/lower stratosphere (UTLS). By W. Frey et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

An evaluation of ozone dry deposition in global scale chemistry climate models. By C. Hardacre et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Processes controlling tropical tropopause temperature and stratospheric water vapor in climate models. By S.C. Hardiman et al. in the Journal of Climate.

Impacts of 20th century aerosol emissions on the South Asian monsoon in the CMIP5 models. By L. Guo et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Subtropical and mid-latitude ozone trends in the stratosphere: implications for recovery. By P.J. Nair et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Science Update: 30 May – 5 June

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).

Tug of war on summertime circulation between radiative forcing and sea surface warming. By T.A. Shaw and A. Voigt in Nature Geoscience.

Climate Symposium 2014 – Findings and Recommendations. By G. Asrar et al. in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Evaluation of updated nitric acid chemistry on ozone precursors and radiative effects. By K.M. Seltzer et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Interannual variability of the Madden-Julian Oscillation and its impact on the North Atlantic Oscillation in the boreal winter. By H. Lin et al. in Geophysical Research Letters.

Black Carbon Aerosols Induced Northern Hemisphere Tropical Expansion. By M. Kovilakam and S. Mahajan in Geophysical Research Letters.

The role of blocking in the summer 2014 collapse of Etesians over the eastern Mediterranean. By E. Tyrlis et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Gravity wave propagation through a vertically and horizontally inhomogeneous background wind. By C.J. Heale and J.B. Snively in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

The effect of ozone depletion on the Southern Annular Mode and stratosphere-troposphere coupling. By F. Dennison et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Stratospheric sulfate aerosol injections cannot preserve the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. By K.E. McCusker et al. in Geophysical Research Letters.

Discussion Papers – Open for comment

Transport pathways of peroxyacetyl nitrate in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere from different monsoon systems during the summer monsoon season. By S. Fadnavis et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

Science Update: 23-29 May

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).

Quantifying the role of internal climate variability in future climate trends. By D.W.J Thompson et al. in the Journal of Climate.

Quantifying contributions to the recent temperature variability in the tropical tropopause layer. By W. Wang et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Wind extraction potential from ensemble Kalman filter assimilation of stratospheric ozone using a global shallow water model. By D.R. Allen et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Polar-lower latitude linkages and their role in weather and climate prediction. By T. Jung et al. in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Drivers of the tropospheric ozone budget throughout the 21st century under the medium-high climate scenario RCP 6.0. By L.E. Revell et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Discussion Papers – Open for comment

Oceanic bromine emissions weighted by their ozone depletion potential. By S. Tegtmeier et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

Reassessment of MIPAS age of air trends and variability. By F.J. Haenel et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

Global HCFC-22 measurements with MIPAS: retrieval, validation, climatologies and trends. By M. Chirkov et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions

Science Update: 16-22 May

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).

Data assimilation in atmospheric chemistry models: current status and future prospects for coupled chemistry meteorology models. By M. Bocquet et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Stratospheric influence on tropospheric jet streams, storm tracks, and surface weather. By J. Kidston et al. in Nature Geoscience.

Polar processing in a split vortex: Arctic ozone loss in early winter 2012/2013. By G.L. Manney et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Big grains go far: understanding the discrepancy between tephrochronology and satellite infrared measurements of volcanic ash. By J.A. Stevenson et al. in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.

Sensitivity of Tropical Tropospheric Composition to Lightning NOx Production as Determined by the NASA GEOS-Replay Model. By C.E. Liaskos et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Aircraft measurements of BrO, IO, glyoxal, NO2, H2O, O2–O2 and aerosol extinction profiles in the tropics: comparison with aircraft-/ship-based in situ and lidar measurements. By R. Volkamer et al. in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.

Round-robin evaluation of nadir ozone profile retrievals: methodology and application to MetOp-A GOME-2. By A. Keppens et al. in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.

The Melting Arctic and Mid-latitude Weather Patterns: Are They Connected? By J. Overland et al. in the Journal of Climate.

TTL cooling and drying during the January 2013 Stratospheric Sudden Warming. By S. Evan et al. in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Evaluation of a regional air quality model using satellite column NO2: treatment of observation errors and model boundary conditions and emissions. By R.J. Pope et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

A hiatus in the stratosphere? By A.J. Ferraro et al. in Nature Climate Change.

Quasi-biennial oscillation of the tropical stratospheric aerosol layer. By R. Hommel et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Discussion Papers – Open for comment

The impact of volcanic aerosols on stratospheric ozone and the Northern Hemisphere polar vortex: separating radiative from chemical effects under different climate conditions. By S. Muthers et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

Science Update: 9-15 May

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).

Interhemispheric transit-time distributions and path-dependent lifetimes constrained by measurements of SF6, CFCs, and CFC replacements. By M. Holzer and D.W. Waugh in Geophysical Research Letters.

Revising the slant-column density retrieval of nitrogen dioxide observed by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument. By S. Marchenko et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Effect of Recent Sea Surface Temperature Trends on the Arctic Stratospheric Vortex. By C.I. Garfinkel et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Growth in stratospheric chlorine from short-lived chemicals not controlled by the Montreal Protocol. By R. Hossaini et al. in Geophysical Research Letters.

Characterization of thermal structure and conditions for overshooting of tropical and extratropical cyclones with GPS radio occultation. By R. Biondi et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Impact of stratospheric major warmings and the quasi-biennial oscillation on the variability of stratospheric water vapor. By M. Tao et al in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Data assimilation of satellite-retrieved ozone, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide with ECMWF’s Composition-IFS. By A. Inness et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

The onset of the barotropic sudden warming in a global model. By Y.S. Liu and R.K. Scott in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Measuring and modeling the lifetime of Nitrous Oxide including its variability. By M.J. Prather et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

User Survey conducted by the Radio Occultation Meteorology Satellite Application Facility (ROM SAF)

Participation deadline: 20 May 2015 – extended to 3 June 2015

The ROM SAF is a decentralized facility under EUMETSAT which runs an operational radio occultation (RO) system. We are conducting this survey in order to gather information and recommendations from users related to possible future RO products and activities to be pursued by the ROM SAF in coordination with EUMETSAT.

The ROM SAF is responsible for delivering bending angle, refractivity, temperature, pressure, humidity profiles, and other radio occultation data in near-real time and offline for NWP and climate users. The offline profiles are further processed into climate products consisting of
e.g. gridded monthly means of bending angle, refractivity, temperature, humidity, and geopotential heights. The ROM SAF also maintains the ROPP (Radio Occultation Processing Package) software package for users wishing to process, quality-control, and assimilate radio occultation data from any radio occultation mission into NWP and other models.

For more information please consult our website: http://www.romsaf.org.

The results of the User Survey will be compiled into a report which will be made available from our website.

If you wish to participate, please follow this link:
http://www.romsaf.org/usersurveys/us4/

The User Survey will close on May 20, 2015.

Contact person:
Johannes K. Nielsen

Science Update: 1-8 May

A selection of new science articles from the past week of interest to the SPARC community (a SPARC Office choice).

Temperature Variation over East Asia during the lifecycle of weak stratospheric polar vortex. By S.-H. Woo et al. in the Journal of Climate.

Modulation of Antarctic vortex composition by the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation. By S.E. Strahan et al. in Geophysical Research Letters.

Observations of planetary waves in the mesosphere-lower thermosphere during stratospheric warming events. By N.H. Stray et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Air-Mass Origin in the Tropical Lower Stratosphere: The Influence of Asian Boundary Layer Air. By C. Orbe et al. in Geophysical Research Letters.

Using self-organising maps to explore ozone profile validation results – SCIAMACHY limb compared to ground-based lidar observations. By J.A.E. van Gijsel et al. in Atmospheric Measurement Techniques.

Signatures of the 2-day wave and sudden stratospheric warmings in Arctic water vapour observed by ground-based microwave radiometry. By B. Tschanz and N. Kämpfer in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

An adaptive covariance relaxation method for ensemble data assimilation. By Y. Ying and F. Zhang in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society.

Influence of isoprene chemical mechanism on modelled changes in tropospheric ozone due to climate and land use over the 21st century. By O.J. Squire et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Discussion Papers – open for comment

Effect of tropical cyclones on the tropical tropopause parameters observed using COSMIC GPS RO data. By S. Ravindra Babu et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

Global temperature response to the major volcanic eruptions in multiple reanalysis datasets. By M. Fujiwara et al. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions.

SPARC Data Center informs on availability of radiosonde data

High resolution radiosonde data from US Radiosonde Replacement System (RRS) stations are now available directly from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/rrs-data/. Data are available in BUFR format at 1-second resolution for all US stations from the time at which each station was upgraded to the RRS up to the present (earliest data available from 2005).

Radiosonde data at 6-second resolution from US stations prior to RRS upgrade are still available from the SPARC Data Center at http://www.aparc-climate.org/data-center/data-access/us-radiosonde/.

8th Atmospheric Limb Workshop in Gothenburg, Sweden, 15-17 September 2015

Deadline for registration and abstract submission: 17 June 2015

The 8th International Atmospheric Limb Workshop will be hosted by The Department of Earth and Space Sciences at Chalmers University of Technology.

Scientific Focus:

  • Limb measurements: Emission (UV, visible, IR, microwave), occultation (solar, stellar, lunar), scattering
  • Past, current and future spaceborne instruments: SMR, OSIRIS, ACE, GOMOS, MIPAS, SCIAMACHY, SMILES, SAGE, SABER, MLS, SOFIE, HIRDLS, OMPS, ALTIUS, MATS, STEAM
  • Observations and modelling: Mesosphere and above, stratosphere, UTLS and troposphere
  • Retrieval algorithms and data assimilation
  • Radiative transfer and spectroscopy

Contact:

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