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Content archived on 2024-05-14

Lee wave modification of polar stratospheric clouds at the Scandinavian mountain ridge

Objective

This project focuses on the creation, destruction, and modification of polar stratospheric clouds in air masses carried across a mountain ridge. The main objective of this project is to perform field measurements down and upstream of the northern Scandinavian mountains to search for generation, destruction, or modification of PSCs as the air parcels cross the mountain ridge. Air parcels will be identified from ozone density profiles (the chemical lifetime of ozone is long compared to the transport time through the region involved) and lee waves will be detected from small scale fluctuations in the ozone and temperature profiles. Correlations of lee-waves, PSCs, and wind patterns as revealed in meteorological fields will be studied.

To achieve the objective ground-based, active-remote-sensing techniques, which provide altitude information
will be employed. An almost identical set of instruments on each side of the Scandinavian mountains, namely
backscatter, temperature, and ozone lidars, and MST radars as well as an array of zenith-looking cameras will
be located near the Arctic Circle west (on Andoya) and east (near Kiruna) of the Scandinavian mountain ridge.
The two stations are approximately 250 km apart and the intervening mountains rise as high as 2000m.
The backscatter lidars will detect and characterise the stratospheric particulate load, while the ozone lidars will
determine the ozone profiles. Temperature profiles will be measured by the rotational Raman technique even
in the presence of intense stratospheric clouds by the ALOMAR lidar; all backscatter lidars will derive
temperatures from the vibrational Raman signal based on the hydrostatic assumption in the case of optically thin
clouds. The MST radars will perform wind measurements in the upper troposphere and the camera array will
image PSCs over a wider area. All instruments are located in a region where mountain lee waves tend to
generate polar stratospheric clouds during the winter months. Such a geographical dense combination of
powerful instruments will be assembled for the first time in the study of mountain lee wave polar stratospheric
clouds.
To detect lee wave formation conditions, the temperature gradient by lidar and the upper troposphere wind speed
by radar will be measured. Lee waves in the atmosphere are identified from oscillations superposed on profiles
of ozone density and temperatures, which are both measured by lidar.

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Call for proposal

Data not available

Coordinator

RHEINISCHE FRIEDRICH-WILHELMS-UNIVERSITÄT BONN
EU contribution
No data

Participants (5)