Submitted on August 31, 2006
Accepted on December 19, 2006
Direct Measurements of the Convective Recycling of the Upper Troposphere
Timothy H. Bertram 1,
Anne E. Perring 1,
Paul J. Wooldridge 1,
John D. Crounse 2,
Alan J. Kwan 3,
Paul O. Wennberg 4,
Eric Scheuer 5,
Jack Dibb 5,
Melody Avery 6,
Glen Sachse 6,
Stephanie A. Vay 6,
James H. Crawford 6,
Cameron S. McNaughton 7,
Antony Clarke 7,
Kenneth E. Pickering 8,
Henry Fuelberg 9,
Greg Huey 10,
Donald R. Blake 11,
Hanwant B. Singh 12,
Samuel R. Hall 13,
Richard E. Shetter 13,
Alan Fried 13,
Brian G. Heikes 14,
Ronald C. Cohen 15*
1 Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
2 Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
3 Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
4 Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA; Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
5 Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA.
6 NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, USA.
7 School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
8 Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
9 Department of Meteorology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.
10 School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA.
11 Department of Chemistry, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
12 NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA.
13 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO 80305, USA.
14 Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI 02882, USA.
15 Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA; Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Ronald C. Cohen , E-mail: cohen{at}cchem.berkeley.edu
We present a statistical representation of the aggregate effects of deep convection on the chemistry and dynamics of the Upper Troposphere (UT) based on direct aircraft observations of the chemical composition of the UT over the Eastern United States and Canada during summer. These measurements provide new and unique observational constraints on the chemistry occurring downwind of convection and the rate at which air in the UT is recycled, previously only the province of model analyses. These results provide quantitative measures that can be used to evaluate global climate and chemistry models.
