Quasi-biennial oscillation modulation of stratospheric  water vapour in the Asian monsoon

Peña-Ortiz, Cristina; Plaza, Nuria Pilar; Gallego, David; Ploeger, Felix

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-5457-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-5457-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-5457-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 9

Research article

|

08 May 2024

Research article |

| 08 May 2024

Quasi-biennial oscillation modulation of stratospheric water vapour in the Asian monsoon

Cristina Peña-Ortiz, Nuria Pilar Plaza, David Gallego, and Felix Ploeger

Data sets

MLS/Aura L2 Water Vapor (H2O) Mixing Ratio - Version 4 A. Lambert et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/AURA/MLS/DATA2009

Version 4.2 x Level 2 data quality and description document N. Livesey et al. https://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/data/v4-2_data_quality_document.pdf

Short summary

Although water vapour (H₂O) in the lower stratosphere is only a few molecules among 1 million air molecules, atmospheric radiative forcing and surface temperature are sensitive to changes in its concentration. Monsoon regions play a key role in H₂O transport and its concentration in the lower stratosphere. We show how the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) has a major impact on H₂O over the Asian monsoon during August through changes in temperature caused by QBO modulation of tropical clouds.