Middle Atmosphere Structure And Dynamics

This book is intended for graduate students in middle atmosphere dynamics courses and will be useful to all research workers in meteorology, aeronomy, and atmospheric chemistry. Furthermore, many of the basic dynamical and physical processes discussed also have broad applicability in other branches of atmospheric dynamics, and will be of interest to those studying such areas as climate dynamics and planetary atmospheres.

For advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in atmospheric, oceanic, and climate science, Atmosphere, Ocean and Climate Dynamics is an introductory textbook on the circulations of the atmosphere and ocean and their interaction, with an emphasis on global scales. It will give students a good grasp of what the atmosphere and oceans look like on the large-scale and why they look that way. The role of the oceans in climate and paleoclimate is also discussed. The combination of observations, theory and accompanying illustrative laboratory experiments sets this text apart by making it accessible to students with no prior training in meteorology or oceanography. * Written at a mathematical level that is appealing for undergraduates and beginning graduate students * Provides a useful educational tool through a combination of observations and laboratory demonstrations which can be viewed over the web * Contains instructions on how to reproduce the simple but informative laboratory experiments * Includes copious problems (with sample answers) to help students learn the material.

PAGEOPH, stratosphere, these differences provide us with new evidence, interpretation of which can materially help to advance our understanding of stratospheric dynamics in general. It is now weil established that smaller-scale motions-in particular gravity waves and turbulence-are of fundamental importance in the general circulation of the mesosphere; they seem to be similarly, if less spectacularly, significant in the troposphere, and probably also in the stratosphere. Our understanding of these motions, their effects on the mean circulation and their mutual interactions is progressing rapidly, as is weil illustrated by the papers in this issue; there are reports of observational studies, especially with new instruments such as the Japanese MV radar, reviews of the state of theory, a laboratory study and an analysis of gravity waves and their effects in the high resolution "SKYHI" general circulation model. There are good reasons to suspect that gravity waves may be of crucial significance in making the stratospheric circulation the way it is (modeling experience being one suggestive piece of evidence for this). Direct observational proof has thus far been prevented by the difficulty of making observations of such scales of motion in this region; in one study reported here, falling sphere observations are used to obtain information on the structure and intensity of waves in the upper stratosphere.

The Earth’s Middle Atmosphere covers the Proceedings of Symposium C2 and the Topical Meetings of the COSPAR Interdisciplinary Scientific Commissions A and C (Meetings A7 and C4) of the COSPAR 29th Plenary Meeting held in Washington, DC, USA, on August 28-September 5, 1992. The first part covers the impact of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) observations on middle atmosphere science. This topic includes the early results of the validation and the application of the Cryogenic Limb Array Etalon Spectrometer (CLAES) data, which is an instrumental approach to the measurement of thermal infrared spectral emission from the atmospheric limb. An overview of the Halogen Occultation Experiment and the use of the UARS data in the NOAA stratospheric monitoring are also discussed in this part. It also includes the observed solar UV irradiance variations of importance to middle atmosphere energetic and photochemistry, as well as the stratospheric and mesospheric observations with the Improved Stratospheric and Mesospheric Sounder. The second part of the book tackles the energetics and chemistry of the middle atmosphere as well as the dynamics and coupling of the middle atmosphere to regions above and below. Results on the validation of the UARS wind and temperature measurements at and above the mesopause comprise the third part of this book. This book will be a great value to geophysicists and atmospheric scientists.

The NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Dynamics, Transport am. Photochemistry in the Middle Atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere" was held in San Francisco, California, U.S.A., 15-17 April 1989. In addition to NATO, the workshop was supported by the University of California, Los Angeles, and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S.A. (NASA). The American Meteorological Society was a co-operating organization. The venue for the workshop was the Lone Mountain Conference Center of the University of San Francisco. The workshop was organized and directed by Dr A.O'Neill (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Meteorological Office, Bracknell, U.K.) and Prof C.R. Mechoso (Dept of Atmospheric Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A.). The workshop was the third one held as part of the Middle Atmosphere in the Southern Hemisphere (MASH) project, an international effort (under the auspices of the Middle Atmosphere Program) to learn more about dynamics, transport and photochemistry in the middle atmosphere of the southern hemisphere. Before the discovery that, during recent years, a dramatic thinning of the ozone layer takes place over Antarctica in spring - the "ozone hole" - the middle atmosphere of the southern hemisphere had received much less attention than that of the northern hemisphere from meteorologists and atmospheric chemists. The MASH project was instituted to remedy this comparative lack of interest.