Assessing the ability to derive rates of polar middle-atmospheric descent using trace gas measurements from remote sensors

Ryan, Niall J.; Kinnison, Douglas E.; Garcia, Rolando R.; Hoffmann, Christoph G.; Palm, Mathias; Raffalski, Uwe; Notholt, Justus

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-1457-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-1457-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-1457-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

Research article

|

02 Feb 2018

Research article |

| 02 Feb 2018

Assessing the ability to derive rates of polar middle-atmospheric descent using trace gas measurements from remote sensors

Niall J. Ryan, Douglas E. Kinnison, Rolando R. Garcia, Christoph G. Hoffmann, Mathias Palm, Uwe Raffalski, and Justus Notholt

Data sets

Middle atmospheric carbon monoxide above Kiruna, Sweden (67.8° N, 20.4° E), 2008-2015 N. J. Ryan, M. Palm, U. Raffalski, R. Larsson, G. Manney, L. Millán, and J. Notholt https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.861730

Short summary

We used model output and instrument data to assess how well polar atmospheric descent rates can be derived using concentration measurements of long-lived gases in the atmosphere. The results indicate that the method incurs errors as large as the descent rates, and often leads to a misinterpretation of the direction of air motion. The rates derived using this method do not appear to represent the mean vertical wind in the middle atmosphere, and we suggest an alternate definition.