Tropopause height as a climate metric

(Before It's News)

[image credit: B. Geerts and E. Linacre]

Having recently noted the existence of this 2011 paper on Talkshop Suggestions, contributor Roger Clague replied to say he felt it could make for an interesting discussion, and put forward some challenging initial thoughts.
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Abstract. We present a seasonal climatology of tropopause altitude for 78◦ N 16◦ E derived from observations 2007–2010 by the SOUSY VHF radar on Svalbard. The spring minimum occurs one month later than that of surface air temperature and instead coincides with the maximum in ozone column density. This confirms similar studies based on radiosonde measurements in the Arctic and demonstrates downward control by the stratosphere.

If one is to exploit the potential of tropopause height as a metric for climate change at high latitude and elsewhere, it is imperative to observe and understand the processes which establish the tropopause – an understanding to which this study contributes.

[The paper makes the customary over-confident claims about so-called greenhouse gases, but nothing that hasn’t been churned out in countless other papers as a matter of course. Absence of such ritualistic jargon would no doubt be a negative for reviewers.]

Their closing remark: ‘All mechanisms controlling the tropopause location exhibit particularly strong seasonal variations at high latitude; this study contributes to our understanding of these mechanisms – necessary if we are to employ tropopause altitude as a metric for climate change.’
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Note – this topic was previously addressed here:
Tropopause Height Becomes Another Climate-Change “Fingerprint”
http://str.llnl.gov/str/March04/Santer.html

A student’s brief guide: The height of the tropopause
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap01/tropo.html

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