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Stratospheric transport by stationary planetary waves ‐ the importance of chemical processes
Author(s) -
Pyle J. A.,
Rogers C. F.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.49710644904
Subject(s) - stratosphere , flux (metallurgy) , coupling (piping) , eddy diffusion , trace gas , physics , chemistry , advection , turbulence , thermodynamics , atmospheric sciences , materials science , organic chemistry , metallurgy
The transport of reactive trace gases by stationary planetary scale waves has been investigated with the aid of Matsuno's stationary planetary wave model (1970) and the linear eddy equation derived from the tracer continuity equation. It is shown that, for stationary fluxes, K‐theory fields, as introduced by Reed and German (1965), may be defined. These become matrix fields when photochemical coupling effects are considered. The eddy flux of a particular trace gas is related to the gradients of the mean concentrations of the other chemically coupled trace gases, as well as to the gradients of its own mean concentration. In the special case of a chemically inert tracer our treatment indicates K yy = K xx = 0 and K yx = – K xy in contradiction to the results obtained by Reed and German (1965) but in agreement with recent results of Clark and Rogers (1978) and Matsuno (1980). The consequences of photochemical coupling effects for eddy fluxes are investigated quantitatively for two simple chemical schemes involving the pairs O 3 and NO x , and NO and NO 2 . These effects are shown to be significant especially for NO and NO 2 whose photochemical time‐constants are short. Furthermore, even in regions of the atmosphere where coupling effects become small, such as the lower stratosphere for O 3 and NO x , the uncoupled K‐fields are quite different for various species indicating a source of error in current 1‐ and 2‐dimensional photochemical models. The relative importance of dynamical and chemical contributions to the uncoupled K‐fields is dependent on the characteristic time‐scales for photochemical and zonal advection processes. The relation of our work to a Lagrangian description of the transport process is discussed.