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Abstract. The tropical tropopause layer (TTL) is a sea of vertical motions. Convectively generated gravity waves create vertical winds on scales of a few to thousands of kilometers as they propagate in a stable atmosphere. Turbulence from gravity wave breaking, radiatively driven convection, and Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities stirs up the TTL on the kilometer scale. TTL cirrus clouds, which moderate the water vapor concentration in the TTL and stratosphere, form in the cold phases of large-scale (> 100 km) wave activity. It has been proposed in several modeling studies that small-scale (< 100 km) vertical motions control the ice crystal number concentration and the dehydration efficiency of TTL cirrus clouds. Here, we present the first observational evidence for this. High-rate vertical winds measured by aircraft are a valuable and underutilized tool for constraining small-scale TTL vertical wind variability, examining its impacts on TTL cirrus clouds, and evaluating atmospheric models. We use 20 Hz data from five National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) campaigns to quantify small-scale vertical wind variability in the TTL and to see how it varies with ice water content, distance from deep convective cores, and height in the TTL. We find that 1 Hz vertical winds are well represented by a normal distribution, with a standard deviation of 0.2–0.4 m s−1. Consistent with a previous observational study that analyzed two out of the five aircraft campaigns that we analyze here, we find that turbulence is enhanced over the tropical west Pacific and within 100 km of convection and is most common in the lower TTL (14–15.5 km), closer to deep convection, and in the upper TTL (15.5–17 km), further from deep convection. An algorithm to classify turbulence and long-wavelength (5 km < λ < 100 km) and short-wavelength (λ < 5 km) gravity wave activity during level flight legs is applied to data from the Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment (ATTREX). The most commonly sampled conditions are (1) a quiescent atmosphere with negligible small-scale vertical wind variability, (2) long-wavelength gravity wave activity (LW GWA), and (3) LW GWA with turbulence. Turbulence rarely occurs in the absence of gravity wave activity. Cirrus clouds with ice crystal number concentrations exceeding 20 L−1 and ice water content exceeding 1 mg m−3 are rare in a quiescent atmosphere but about 20 times more likely when there is gravity wave activity and 50 times more likely when there is also turbulence, confirming the results of the aforementioned modeling studies. Our observational analysis shows that small-scale gravity waves strongly influence the ice crystal number concentration and ice water content within TTL cirrus clouds. Global storm-resolving models have recently been run with horizontal grid spacing between 1 and 10 km, which is sufficient to resolve some small-scale gravity wave activity. We evaluate simulated vertical wind spectra (10–100 km) from four global storm-resolving simulations that have horizontal grid spacing of 3–5 km with aircraft observations from ATTREX. We find that all four models have too little resolved vertical wind at horizontal wavelengths between 10 and 100 km and thus too little small-scale gravity wave activity, although the bias is much less pronounced in global SAM than in the other models. We expect that deficient small-scale gravity wave activity significantly limits the realism of simulated ice microphysics in these models and that improved representation requires moving to finer horizontal and vertical grid spacing.
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This content will become publicly available on December 1, 2025
Global Distributions of Atmospheric Turbulence Estimated Using Operational High Vertical-Resolution Radiosonde Data
Abstract Atmospheric turbulence plays a key role in the mixing of trace gases and diffusion of heat and momentum, as well as in aircraft operations. Although numerous observational turbulence studies have been conducted using campaign experiments and operational data, understanding the turbulence characteristics particularly in the free atmosphere remains challenging due to its small-scale, intermittent, and sporadic nature, along with limited observational data. To address this, turbulence in the free atmosphere is estimated herein based on the Thorpe method by using operational high vertical-resolution radiosonde data (HVRRD) with vertical resolutions of about 5 or 10 m across near-global regions, provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) via the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) for 6 years (October 2017–September 2023). Globally, turbulence is stronger in the troposphere than in the stratosphere, with maximum turbulence occurring about 6 km below the tropopause, followed by a sharp decrease above. Seasonal variations show strong tropospheric turbulence in summer and weak turbulence in winter for both hemispheres, while the stratosphere exhibits strong turbulence during spring. Regional analyses identify strong turbulence regions over the South Pacific and South Africa in the troposphere and over East Asia and South Africa in the stratosphere. Notably, turbulence information can be provided in regions and high altitudes that are not covered by commercial aircraft, suggesting its potential utility for both present and future high-altitude aircraft operations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2129223
- PAR ID:
- 10568656
- Publisher / Repository:
- AMS
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Volume:
- 105
- Issue:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 0003-0007
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- E2551 to E2566
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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