Horizontal Winds, Potential Vorticity, and Stratopause Characteristics from a Mesospheric and Upper Stratospheric Unified Dataset

The upper stratosphere (the region of Earth’s atmosphere from ~25 – 50 km altitude) and the mesosphere (~50 – 80 km ) exhibit far greater sensitivity to long-term atmospheric change than is seen in the lower atmosphere; temperature in these regions can be considered as a distinct “fingerprint” of climate change. However, existing observational capabilities have not been leveraged to produce a long-term, consistent record, and observations of this region of the atmosphere are sparser and more intermittent than those of the lower atmosphere.

The Mesospheric and Upper Stratospheric Temperature and Related Datasets (MUSTARD) project provides a unified upper stratospheric and mesospheric record based on observations from six satellite instruments: the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instruments, the Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry (SABER) instrument, the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE), the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment mission and the Solar Occultation for Ice (SOFIE) instrument.

Here, we used the temperature record to produce geopotential height (GPH) fields, horizontal winds based on these GPH fields, and potential vorticity calculated from the derived winds. We also discuss stratopause characteristics determined using a warm point and a static stability statopause definition. The related datasets could prove to be invaluable to evaluate models and reanalyses.

© California Institute of Technology. U.S. Government sponsorship acknowledged.