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Time‐varying zonal asymmetries in stratospheric nitrous oxide and methane
Author(s) -
Gao H.,
Stanford J. L.
Publication year - 1993
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.49711951113
Subject(s) - stratosphere , methane , atmospheric sciences , nitrous oxide , latitude , mixing ratio , middle latitudes , zonal flow (plasma) , environmental science , atmosphere (unit) , mixing (physics) , wave packet , climatology , geology , meteorology , physics , plasma , chemistry , atomic physics , geodesy , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , tokamak
Previously analyses of Stratospheric And Mesopheric Sounder (SAMS) data of atmospheric constituent gases have dealt almost exclusively with zonal means (and mostly monthly means), owing perhaps to concern over data quality. The purpose of this note is to show that, with care, time‐dependent zonally‐asymmetric features may be recovered from the SAMS nitrous oxide and methane data. As an example, we demonstrate the existence of zonal wave‐1 constituent perturbations with periods of a few weeks in the middle and upper stratosphere. When the perturbations are normalized by the constituent zonal‐mean mixing ratio to compensate for the slowly varying (in both space and time) background concentration of constituents, wavepacket‐like features are found over all latitudes and seasons in the three‐year SAMS record. One specific low‐latitude case discussed had features which appear to be consistent with constituent oscillations induced by episodic equatorial Kelvin waves. Further studies are needed to better identify the nature of the plethora of observed wave‐like phenomena.