How can Brewer–Dobson circulation trends be estimated from changes in stratospheric water vapour and methane?

Poshyvailo-Strube, Liubov; Müller, Rolf; Fueglistaler, Stephan; Hegglin, Michaela I.; Laube, Johannes C.; Volk, C. Michael; Ploeger, Felix

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9895-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9895-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9895-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 15

Research article

|

03 Aug 2022

Research article |

| 03 Aug 2022

How can Brewer–Dobson circulation trends be estimated from changes in stratospheric water vapour and methane?

Liubov Poshyvailo-Strube, Rolf Müller, Stephan Fueglistaler, Michaela I. Hegglin, Johannes C. Laube, C. Michael Volk, and Felix Ploeger

Data sets

A new Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS): 1. Formu- 110 lation of advection and mixing (https://jugit.fz-juelich.de/clams/CLaMS) D. S. McKenna, P. Konopka, J.-U. Grooß, G. Günther, R. Müller, R. Spang, D. Offermann, and Y. Orsolini https://doi.org/10.1029/2000JD000114

A new Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS): 2. Formulation of chem- 115 istry scheme and initialization (https://jugit.fz-juelich.de/clams/CLaMS) D. S. McKenna, J.-U. Grooß, G. Günther, P. Konopka, R. Müller, G. Carver, and Y. Sasano https://doi.org/10.1029/2000JD000113

The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system (https://apps.ecmwf.int/archive-catalogue/?class=ei) D. P. Dee, S. M. Uppala, A. J. Simmons, et al. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828

Short summary

Brewer–Dobson circulation (BDC) controls the composition of the stratosphere, which in turn affects radiation and climate. As the BDC cannot be measured directly, it is necessary to infer its strength and trends indirectly. In this study, we test in the model world different methods for estimating the mean age of air trends based on a combination of stratospheric water vapour and methane data. We also provide simple practical advice of a more reliable estimation of the mean age of air trends.