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Stratospheric and Tropospheric Flux Contributions to the Polar Cap Energy Budgets
The flux of moist static energy into the polar regions plays a key role in the energy budget and climate of the polar regions. While usually studied from a vertically integrated perspective (Fwall), this analysis examines its vertical structure, using the NASA-MERRA-2 reanalysis to compute climatolo...
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Published in: | Journal of climate 2021-06, Vol.34 (11), p.4261-4278 |
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Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | The flux of moist static energy into the polar regions plays a key role in the energy budget and climate of the polar regions. While usually studied from a vertically integrated perspective (Fwall), this analysis examines its vertical structure, using the NASA-MERRA-2 reanalysis to compute climatological and anomalous fluxes of sensible, latent, and potential energy across 70°N and 65°S for the period 1980–2016. The vertical structure of the climatological flux is bimodal, with peaks in the middle to lower troposphere and middle to upper stratosphere. The near-zero flux at the tropopause defines the boundary between stratospheric (Fstrat) and tropospheric (Ftrop) contributions to Fwall. Especially at 70°N, Fstrat is found to be important to the climatology and variability of Fwall, contributing 20.9 W m−2 to Fwall (19% of Fwall) during the winter and explaining 23% of the variance of Fwall. During winter, an anomalous poleward increase in Fstrat preceding a sudden stratospheric warming is followed by an increase in outgoing longwave radiation anomalies, with little influence on the surface energy budget of the Arctic. Conversely, a majority of the energy input by an anomalous poleward increase in Ftrop goes toward warming the Arctic surface. Overall, Ftrop is found to be a better metric than Fwallfor evaluating the influence of atmospheric circulations on the Arctic surface climate. |
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ISSN: | 0894-8755 1520-0442 |
DOI: | 10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0722.1 |