Search

The authors examine the distribution and variation of carbon monoxide (CO) in the tropics from the surface to the lower stratosphere. By analyzing space-borne microwave limb sounder (MLS) measurements, measurements of pollution in the troposphere (MOPITT) and modern-era retrospective analysis for research and applications (MERRA) meteorological products, and atmospheric chemistry and climate model intercomparison project (ACCMIP) surface emission inventories, the influences of atmospheric dynamics and surface emissions are investigated. The results show that there are four centers of highly concentrated CO mixing ratio over tropical areas in different seasons: two in the Northern Hemisphere and another two in the Southern Hemisphere. All of these centers correspond to local deep convective systems and monsoons/anticyclones. The authors suggest that both deep convections and anticyclones affect CO in the tropical troposphere and lower stratosphere — the former helping to transport CO from the lower...

Based on ground-based Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) observations in Shouxian, Anhui province, China, the authors retrieve the cloud base height (CBH) and effective cloud emissivity by using the minimum root-mean-square difference method. This method was originally developed for satellite remote sensing. The high-temporal-resolution retrieval results can depict the trivial variations of the zenith clouds continuously. The retrieval results are evaluated by comparing them with observations by the cloud radar. The comparison shows that the retrieval bias is smaller for the middle and low cloud, especially for the opaque cloud. When two layers of clouds exist, the retrieval results reflect the weighting radiative contribution of the multi-layer cloud. The retrieval accuracy is affected by uncertainties of the AERI radiances and sounding profiles, in which the role of uncertainty in the temperature profile is dominant.

Yangbajing (YBJ) is located in the Tibetan Plateau, China. The characteristics of solar radiation and its relationship with clouds at YBJ from April 2009 to April 2010 were analyzed in this paper. The annual mean solar radiation was 478.4 W m-2 , and the annual mean transmittance was 0.713. The atmospheric mean transmittance of clear skies reaches 0.828 when the solar elevation angle (SEA) is greater than 10 degrees. Comparisons with numerical simulations show that the atmosphere of YBJ is clean. Impacts from atmospheric conditions on solar radiation are similar for clear skies during the year because the standard deviation of transmittance in clear skies was less than 0.05 when the SEA was greater than 10 degrees. It is important to understand the impact of clouds on solar radiation without considering other impact factors. In the last part of this article, the authors analyzed and established a statistical quantitative relationship between surface solar radiation and cloud fraction.

The automatic all—sky imager developed by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, provides all—sky visible images in the red, green, and blue channels. This paper presents three major calibration experiments of the all—sky imager, geometric angular calibration, optical calibration, and radiometric calibration, and then infers an algorithm to retrieve relative radiance from the all—sky images. Field experiments show that the related coefficient between retrieved radiance and measured radiance is about 0.91. It is feasible to use the algorithm to retrieve radiance from images. The paper sets up a relationship between radiance and the image, which is useful for using the all—sky image in numerical-simulations that predict more meteorological parameters.

The SABER/TIMED temperatures taken in 2002–2006 are used to delineate the tidal signals in the middle and upper atmosphere. Then the Hough mode decomposition is applied with the DE3 tide, and the overall features of the seasonal variations and the complete global structures of the tide are observed. Investigation results show that the tide is most prominent at 110 km with the maximal amplitude of > 9K, and exhibits significant seasonal variation with its maximum amplitude always occurring in July every year. Results from the Hough mode decomposition reveal that the tide is composed primarily of two leading propagating Hough modes, i.e., the (−3,3) and the (−3,4) modes, thus is equatorially trapped. Estimation of the mean amplitude of the Hough modes show that the (−3,3) mode and (−3,4) mode exhibit maxima at 110km and 90 km, respectively. The (−3,3) mode plays a predominant role in shaping the global latitude-height structure of the tide, e.g., the vertical scale of > 50km at the equator, and the annual course. Significant influence of the (−3,4) mode is found below 90km, where the tide exhibits anti-symmetric structure about the equator; meanwhile the tide at northern tropical latitudes exhibits smaller vertical wavelength of about 30 km.

Migrating diurnal tide in the MLT region is examined by the application of Hough mode decomposition with the tide delineated from the SABER/TIMED temperatures over 2002-2006. The decomposition results show that in the height range 60-100 km, the (1, 1) mode is the most predominant among eight leading Hough modes including four propagating and four trapped modes. It exhibits a sustained maximum at 97 km and significant semi-annual oscillation. Additionally, a novel feature of inter-annual variation with period of about two years is clearly seen in the (1, 1) mode, e.g., repeated maxima are seen at the March equinox of 2002, 2004 and 2006, respectively. This feature is further manifested by the tidal amplitudes in the height range 70-100 km in the height-time cross-section at the equator. It is likely of the QBO as the height range just coincides to where the zonal mean zonal winds derived by using the UARS data exhibiting the QBO. The other results show that the (1, 2) mode is important at < 80km exhibiting comparable amplitude to that of the (1, 1) mode, and in particular the nearly anti-correlation with the (1, 1) mode. The tide at about 85 km is suggested of rather complex as the four trapped modes exhibit maximum at these heights, which indicates the presence of local excitations or sources at below.

The seasonal variation of inertia gravity-wave activity in the lower stratosphere (17―24 km) over Beijing is studied based on the high vertical resolution radionsonde observations (from De-cember 2001 to February 2003) of Beijing Observatory (116°28′E, 39°48′N). Some of the important gravity-wave parameters, such as intrinsic frequency, and propagation direction, are estimated according to the polarized relation among gravity-wave wind components and temperature. Time series of wave energy show that the largest wave amplitudes occur during the winter and the least during the summer, and the average of the KE:PE ratios is about 2.6. Zonal and meridional wind perturbations have almost the same roots of mean variances, which shows that the wave energy in the lower stratosphere is isotropic horizontally. The motion and tem-perature fields are dominated by waves with vertical wavelengths of 1.5―3 km, which occupy above 80% samples, with a mean value of about 2.3 km. The horizontal wavelengths are mainly distributed between 100―800 km, averaging 445 km. The ratio of the mean horizontal to vertical wavelength is about 200:1, which indicates that the wave propagates nearly horizontally, with a very small vertical angle. The intrinsic frequency is estimated by fitting a polarized ellipse to the wind perturbations after band-filtering waves with a wavelength of 1.5―3 km, and the results show that the intrinsic frequency is dominated by 1 f ―3.5 f , with an averaging value of 2 f , corre-sponding to an intrinsic time period of 9 hours. Wave energy is found to propagate mainly upward, and in the horizontal direction, there is clear azimuthal anisotropy, with predominate northwest propagation against the prevailing wind.

A new method applying an artificial neural network (ANN) to retrieve water vapor profiles in the troposphere is presented. In this paper, a fully-connected, three-layer network based on the back-propagation algorithm is constructed. Month, latitude, altitude and bending angle are chosen as the input vectors and water vapor pressure as the output vector. There are 130 groups of occultation measurements from June to November 2002 in the dataset. Seventy pairs of bending angles and water vapor pressure profiles are used to train the ANN, and the sixty remaining pairs of profiles are applied to the validation of the retrieval. By comparing the retrieved profiles with the corresponding ones from the Information System and Data Center of the Challenging Mini-Satellite Payload for Geoscientific Research and Application (CHAMP-ISDC), it can be concluded that the ANN is relatively convenient and accurate. Its results can be provided as the first guess for the iterative methods or the non-linear optimal estimation inverse method.

Recent advances in studies of the middle and upper atmosphere and their coupling with the lower atmosphere in China are briefly reviewed. This review emphasizes four aspects: (1) Development of instrumentation for middle and upper atmosphere observation; (2) Analyses and observation of middle and upper atmosphere; (3) Theoretical and modeling studies of planetary wave and gravity wave activities in the middle atmosphere and their relation to lower atmospheric processes; (4) Study on the coupling between the stratosphere and the troposphere.

About 20 years of Dobson and TOMS data are used to analyze the variation characteristics of total atmospheric ozone in Beijing (39.93°N, 116.40°E) and Kunming (25.02°N, 102.68°E). It is shown that: (1) the long-term change trends for 1979 (or 1980)–2000 period are −0.642 DU/year and −0.009 DU/year respectively in Beijing and Kunming, (2) there are strong intra-seasonal variations especially in wintertime, which are comparable to seasonal variations both in Beijing and Kunming, (3) the long-term trend deduced from shorter time period of record is significantly different from that for longer time period, both in Kunming and Beijing, (4) there are significant QBO signals both in Beijing (mid latitude) and Kunming (low latitude), (5) the inter-annual variations of atmospheric ozone in both stations are mainly composed of the long-term trend and QBO signals, and (6) our Dobson and TOMS measurements of total ozone are generally in good agreement.

Aerosol particles over the coastal area are subject to the modification of their chemical composition during their transport and diffusion. For examining the modification, the marine aerosol particles are collected at an island, East China Sea. Comparison of elemental composition of the marine aerosols with that of the samples collected at a coastal site, e.g. in Shanghai, was made. The results of chemical analysis show that the loss of chlorine component in aerosol particles is one of the main characteristics in the course of diffusion of marine aerosols into the coastal continent. Sulphur is a dominant component for fine particles in both marine and coastal aerosols. The relation of particle number concentration and particle size distribution to the meteorological conditions was discussed briefly. These results can be used as a reference in the estimation of equivalent refractive index of the aerosols for radiation transfer.

The Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet and Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (SBUV/TOMS) instrument has provided useful data for deducing ozone vertical profiles and total ozone amounts. Although, data processing techniques for solving the inverse problem have been discussed, the retrieval accuracy still needs to be improved by developing new methodology. In this paper the Newtonian non-linear iteration method was applied to the Ultraviolet radiative transfer equation to retrieve the atmospheric ozone vertical distribution. In order to reduce the number of unknowns for retrieval and make the solution procedure more stable, the atmospheric ozone profile is represented by its Empirical Orthogonal Functions (EOFs) which can be derived from a set of global ozone profiles such as TIGR. Ozone retrievals based on simulated SBUV albedo measurements from 6 model atmospheres show the potential application of this method in operational processing of SBUV real observed measurements which will fly on the satellite such as NOAA-K.

This paper summarizes the results of the researches on the middle and upper atmosphere obtained by Chinese scientists in 2008-2010. The focuses are specifically placed on the researches being associated with ground-based observation capability development, dynamical processes, the property of atmospheric circulation and the chemistry-climate coupling of the middle atmospheric layers. Keywords Middle and upper atmosphere, Metalic and airglow layer, Atmospheric tides