Abstract
The tropopause variation is very complex and affects climate change in the upper-troposphere lower-stratosphere (UTLS). In this study, the relationship and interaction between global gravity wave (GW) activities in terms of potential energy (Ep) over an altitude range from 5 km below the lapse-rate tropopause (LRT) to 10 km above the LRT and LRT characteristics are investigated using data from 12 global navigation satellite system radio occultation (GNSS-RO) missions from June 2001 to June 2022. The LRT height (LRT-H) and LRT temperature (LRT-T) display an increasing trend, while the LRT pressure (LRT-P) depicts a decreasing trend. In height Band 1, which corresponds to a height range from 5 km below LRT to LRT level, the GW Ep is maximum, with an upward trend of about 0.62 J/kg per decade. In addition, in height Band 2, which corresponds to a height range from LRT level to 5 km above LRT level, the GW Ep shows an increasing trend of about 0.18 J/kg per decade. In the case of height Band 3, which corresponds to a height range from 5 km above LRT level to 10 km above LRT level, the GW Ep is minimum with a downward trend of about − 0.17 J/kg per decade. The highest correlation coefficients among GW Ep and LRT parameters (H, T, and P) are at the height Band 2, at about − 0.52, 0.76, and 0.6 for LRT-H, LRT-T, and LRT-P, respectively. The results of the empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of LRT parameters and GW activity at all height bands indicate that all the studied parameters have an increasing variability pattern. In addition, the leading mode of spatial variability of GW Ep at height Band 2 agrees with that of LRT-T and LRT-P and has an opposite sign in the case of LRT-H. The singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis results reveal that the leading temporal variability paired mode of Ep and all LRT parameters has a significant positive correlation, while the spatial one shows a strong coupling between the patterns of the combined Ep in height Band 2 and LRT parameters. Both global GW Ep and tropopause parameters have a clear seasonal variation. The results illustrate that the variations of LRT parameters are most closely related to the variations of GW Ep at height Band 2. Furthermore, the close effect of GW’s activity on tropopause variation characteristics is clearly evident.
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Data availability
GNSS-RO data used in this paper are available at CDAAC archive (https://cdaac-www.cosmic.ucar.edu/, CDAAC 2022).
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the CDAAC for providing GNSS-RO data. In addition, the authors are grateful to Prof. Hatem Odah for his support. The first author expresses his gratitude to Egypt’s National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics and China’s Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology for providing him with a scholarship to pursue his Ph.D.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Project (Grant No. 12073012), China Scholarship Council (CSC), and Ministry of Higher Education of the Arab Republic of Egypt.
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Conceptualization, M.D. and S.J.; methodology, M.D. and S.J.; software, M.D. and A.S.; validation, S.J. and M.D.; formal analysis, M.D. and A.S.; investigation, S.J. and M.D.; resources, M.D.; data curation, M.D. and A.S.; writing—original draft preparation, S.J. and M.D.; writing—review and editing, S.J., M.D. and A.S.; visualization, M.D.; supervision, S.J.; project administration, S.J.; funding acquisition, S.J. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Darrag, M., Jin, S. & Samy, A. Effect of global gravity wave activity on tropopause variation characteristics from multiple GNSS-RO observations. Theor Appl Climatol 155, 2669–2688 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04780-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04780-y