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Direct retrieval of wind from total ozone mapping spectrometer (TOMS) data: Examples from FASTEX
Author(s) -
Davis Christopher,
LowNam Simon,
Shapiro Melvyn A.,
Zou Xiaolei,
Krueger Arlin J.
Publication year - 1999
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.49712556113
Subject(s) - geopotential height , environmental science , total ozone mapping spectrometer , ozone , potential vorticity , tropospheric ozone , atmospheric sciences , troposphere , synoptic scale meteorology , meteorology , latitude , climatology , correlation coefficient , ozone layer , vorticity , precipitation , geology , physics , geodesy , mathematics , statistics , vortex
The quantitative relationship between ozone and potential vorticity, and hence balanced wind and temperature, is examined using observations collected for a one‐month period by the total ozone mapping spectrometer (TOMS). Ozone data are compared with Ertel potential vorticity (PV) integrated vertically from 500 to 50 mb, obtained from the NCEP/NCAR (National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research) reanalysis archive. By performing a simple time filtering we isolate synoptic‐scale transients in the ozone and PV. We show that the previously reported high correlation between PV and ozone is actually variable from day to day. the correlation also shows strong latitudinal dependence, with essentially no correlation in the tropics and high correlation in middle latitudes. A method is introduced to derive a three‐dimensional PV representation from ozone data and a background field taken from the reanalysis data. PV‐inversion methods are then used to recover balanced winds and temperatures and geopotential heights which may be compared to the analysed fields. Results suggest that many of the upper‐tropospheric synoptic‐scale wind perturbations may be recovered from the ozone data. A systematic error in the retrieval method used here is the understimation of the strength of upper‐level ridges, corresponding to an excess of vertically integrated ozone compared with integrated PV. We discuss reasons for this difference.