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Anomalous scaling of mesoscale tropospheric humidity fluctuations
Author(s) -
Cho John Y. N.,
Newell Reginald E.,
Sachse Glen W.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/1999gl010846
Subject(s) - troposphere , extratropical cyclone , advection , mesoscale meteorology , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , climatology , scaling , boundary layer , humidity , water vapor , geology , meteorology , physics , mechanics , geometry , mathematics , thermodynamics
Water vapor fluctuations are measured and analyzed at an unprecedented 10‐m resolution throughout the troposphere. Computation of structure functions shows that specific humidity variations observed by research aircraft over the Pacific Ocean exhibit anomalous scaling from about 50 m to 100 km in horizontal range. The scaling laws show different characteristics for the marine boundary layer, the tropical free troposphere, and the extratropical free troposphere. More specifically, boundary‐layer humidity fluctuations are less smooth and more stationary than those in the free troposphere, while the extratropical free tropospheric variations are less intermittent than those in the other two regions. The anomalous scaling results argue against passive advection by a spatially smooth flow (chaotic advection) at these scales.