Stratospheric Influence on Tropopause Height: The Radiative Constraint

Abstract

Earlier theoretical and modeling work introduced the concept of a radiative constraint relating tropopause height to tropospheric lapse rate and other factors such as surface temperature. Here a minimal quantitative model for the radiative constraint is presented and used to illustrate the essential physics underlying the radiative constraint, which involves the approximate balance between absorption and emission of thermal infrared (IR) radiation determining tropopause temperature. The results of the minimal model are then extended in two ways. First, the effects of including a more realistic treatment of IR radiation are quantified. Second, the radiative constraint model is extended to take into account non-IR warming processes such as solar heating and dynamical warming near the tropopause. The sensitivity of tropopause height to non-IR warming is estimated to be a few kilometers per K day?1, with positive warming leading to a lower tropopause. Sensitivities comparable to this are found in GCM experiments in which imposed changes in the ozone distribution or in the driving of the stratospheric residual mean meridional circulation lead to changes in tropopause height. In the Tropics the influence of the stratospheric circulation is found to extend down at least as far as the main convective outflow level, some 5 km below the temperature minimum.