References

ACPD

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions

ACPD

1680-7375

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acpd-11-31067-2011

Measurements of the movement of the jet streams at mid-latitudes, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, 1979 to 2010

Hudson

R. D.

Departament of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742–2425, USA

22 11 2011

11 11 31067 31090

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/31067/2011/acpd-11-31067-2011.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/31067/2011/acpd-11-31067-2011.pdf

Previous studies have shown that the mean latitude of the subtropical jet streams in both hemispheres have shifted toward the poles over the last few decades. This paper presents a study of the movement of both the subtropical and Polar fronts, the location of the respective jet streams, between 1979 and 2010 at mid-latitudes, using total ozone measurements to identify the sharp horizontal boundary that occurs at the position of the fronts. Previous studies have shown that the two fronts are the boundaries of three distinct regimes in the stratosphere, corresponding to the Hadley. Ferrel, and Polar meridionally overturning circulation cells in the troposphere, each of which has a distinct temperature profile. Over the period of study the horizontal area of the Hadley cell has increased at latitudes between 20 and 60 degrees while the area of the Polar cell has decreased. A linear regression analysis was performed to identify the major factors associated with the movement of the subtropical jet streams. These were: (1) changes in the Tropical land/ocean temperature, (2) direct radiative forcing from greenhouse gases in the troposphere, (3) changes in the temperature of the lower Tropical stratosphere, (4) the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, and (5) volcanic eruptions. The dominant mechanism was the direct radiative forcing from greenhouse gases. Over the period of study the poleward movement of the subtropical jet streams was 3.7±0.3 degrees in the Northern Hemisphere and 6.5±0.2 degrees in the Southern Hemisphere, with a net expansion of the Tropical belt of 10.2 degrees. Previous studies have shown that weather systems tend to follow the jet streams. The observed poleward movement in both hemispheres over the past thirty years represents a significant change in the position of the subtropical jet streams, which should lead to significant latitudinal shifts in the global weather patterns, temperatures, precipitation and the hydrologic cycle.

References 1

Archer, C. and Caldiera, K.: Historical trends in the Jet Streams, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L08803, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2008GL033614doi:10.1029/2008GL033614, 2008.

Amman, C. M., Meehl, G. A., Washington, W. M., and Zander, C. S.: A monthly and latitudionally varying volcanic forcing data set in simulations of the 20th century climate, Geophys. Res. Lett., 30, 1657, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2003GL016875doi:10.1029/2003GL016875, 2003.

Bluestein, H. B.: Synoptic-Dynamic Meteorology in Midlatitudes, Vol 2, Observations and Theory of Weather Systems, 594 pp., Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1993

Follette-Cook, M. B., Hudson, R. D., and Nedoluha, G. E.: Classification of Northern Hemisphere stratospheric ozone and water vapor profiles by meteorological regime, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 9, 5989–6003, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-9-5989-2009doi:10.5194/acp-9-5989-2009, 2009.

Free, M., Seidel, D. J., Angell, J. K., Lanzante, J., Durre, I., and Peterson, T. C.: Radiosonde Atmospheric Temperature Products for Assessing Climate (RATPAC): A new data set of large-area time series, J. Geophys. Res., 110, D22101, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2005JD006169doi:10.1029/2005JD006169, 2005.

Fu, Q., Johanson, C. M., Wallace, J. M., and Reichler, T.: Enhanced Mid-Latitude Tropospheric Warming in Satellite Measurements, Science, 312, 1179, http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1125566doi:10.1126/science.1125566, 2006.

Hoffman D. J., Butler, J. H., Dlugokencky, E. J., Elkins, J. W., Masarie, K., Montzka, S. A., and Tans, P.: The role of carbon dioxide in climate forcing from 1979 to 2004: Introduction of the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, Tellus B, 58, 614–619, 2006

Holton, J. R. An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology, 511 pp., Elsevier, New York, 1992.

Hu, Y. and Fu, Q.: Observed poleward expansion of the Hadley circulation since 1979, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 7, 5229–5236, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-7-5229-2007doi:10.5194/acp-7-5229-2007, 2007.

Hudson, R. D., Andrade, M., Follette, M. B., and Frolov, A. D.: The total ozone field separated into meteorological regimes – Part~I: Defining the regimes, J. Atmos. Sci., 62, 1669–1677, 2003.

Hudson, R. D., Andrade, M. F., Follette, M. B., and Frolov, A. D.: The total ozone field separated into meteorological regimes - Part~II: Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude total ozone trends, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 5183–5191, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/acp-6-5183-2006doi:10.5194/acp-6-5183-2006, 2006.

IPCC: Climate Change 2007; The Physical Science Basis, Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change, edited by: Solomon, S., Qui, D., Manning, M., Chen, Z., Marquis, M., Avery, K. B., Tigner, M., and Miller, H. L., Cambridge University press, Cambridge UK and New York, NY, USA, 996 pp., 2007.

Kanamitsu, M., Ebisuzak, W., and Woollen, J.: NCEP-DOE AMPII reanalysis (R-2), B. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 83, 1631–1641, 2002.

Kaffel, A. K. and Muller, M. J.: Results of neural network total ozone retrieval on global NOAA_TOVS data, Technical Proceedings of the 10th International ATOV Study Conference, edited by: La Marshall, J. and Jasper, J. D., Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, Melbourne, Australia, 268–275, 1999.

Kalnay, E., Kanamitsu, M., Kistler, R., Collins, W., Deaven, D., Gandin, L., Iredell, M., Saha, S., White, G., Woollen, J., Zhu, Y., Chelliah, M., Ebisuzaki, W., Higgins, W., Janowiak, J., Mo, K. C., Ropelewski, C., Wang, J., Leetmaa, A., Reynolds, R., Jenne, R., and Joseph, D.: The NMC/NCAR 40 Yr Reanalysis Project, B. Am. Meteor. Soc., 77, 437–471, 1996.

Kistler, R., Kalnay, E., Collins, W., Saha, S., White, G., Woollen, J., Chelliah, M., Ebisuzaki, W., Kanamitsu, M., Kousky, V., van den Dool, H., Jenne, R., and Fiorino, M.: The NCEP-NCAR 50 Yr Reanalysis: Monthly Means CD-ROM and Documentation, B. Am. Meteor. Soc., 82, 247–268, 2001.

Lu, J., Deser, C., and Reichler, T.: Cause of the widening of the Tropical belt since 1958, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L03803, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2008GL036076doi:10.1029/2008GL036076, 2009.

McPeters, R., Bhartia, P. K., Kruger, A., Herman, J., Schlesinger, B., Wellermeyer, C., Seftor, C., Jaross, G., Taylor, S., Swissler, T., Torres, O., Byerly, W., and Cebula, R.: Nimbus-7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Data Products User's Guide, NASA Reference Publication 1384, National Aeronautic and Space Administration, Washington, DC, 1996.

McPeters, R., Bhartia, P. K., Kruger, A., Herman, J., Wellermeyer, C., Serafino, C., Jaross, G., Torres, O., Moy, L., Labow, G., Byerly, W., Taylor, S., Swissler, T., and Cebula, R.: Earth Probe Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Data Products User's Giude, NASA Technical Report TR_1998-206895, National Aeronautic and Space Administration, Washington, DC, 1998.

Neurenforfer, A, M.: Ozone monitoring with TIROS-N operational vertical sounders, J. Geophys. Res., 101, 18807–18828, 1996.

Press, W. H., Teuskojsky, S. A., Vettering, W. T., and Flannering, B. P.: Numerical recipes in C, 960 pp., Cambridge University Press, New York, USA, 1992.

Seidel, D. and Randel, W. J.: Recent widening of the Tropical belt: Evidence from Tropical observations, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D20113, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2007JD008861doi:10.1029/2007JD008861, 2007.

Smith, T. M., Reynolds, R. W., Petersen, T. C., and Lavrinmore, J.: Improvements to NOAA's Historical Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (1880 to 2006), J. Climate, 21, 2283–2296, 2008.

Uppala, S. M., Kållberg, P. W., Simmons, A. J., Andrae, U., da Costa Bechtold, V., Fiorino, M., Gibson, J. K., Haseler, J., Hernandez, A., Kelly, G. A., Li, X., Onogi, K., Saarinen, S., Sokka, N., Allan, R. P., Andersson, E., Arpe, K., Balmaseda, M. A., Beljaars, A. C. M., van de Berg, L., Bidlot, J., Bormann, N., Caires, S., Chevallier, F., Dethof, A., Dragosavac, M., Fisher, M., Fuentes, M., Hagemann, S., Hólm, E., Hoskins, B. J., Isaksen, L., Janssen, P. A. E. M., Jenne, R., McNally, A. P., Mahfouf, J.-F., Morcrette, J.-J., Rayner, N. A., Saunders, R. W., Simon, P., Sterl, A., Trenberth, K. E., Untch, A., Vasiljevic, D., Viterbo, P., and Woollen, J.: The ERA-40 re-analysis, Q. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc., 131, 2961–3012, 2005.