Cross-Tropopause Transport of Water Substance by Deep Convective Storms—New Evidence and Modeling Studies

Water vapor in the stratosphere can intercept substantial amount of terrestrial infrared radiation, thus causing exasperation of global warming at the surface due to increasing CO2. It also serves as the source material for making stratospheric odd hydrogen species that may cause ozone depletion through certain catalytic cycles. It is therefore very important to identify the process via which water vapor is transported across the tropopause into the stratosphere.

Transport of water substance into the stratosphere by deep convective storms have been investigated by the author since around 2000, and in 2003 he proposed that it is the internal gravity wave breaking at the storm top that causes the water substance to penetrate through the tropopause and enter the stratosphere. Since then increasing evidence, including the observation of above-anvil cirrus plumes, jumping cirrus at the storm top, and the so-called pancake clouds, have been suggested as the manifestation of this wave breaking phenomenon. Cloud-resolving model studies did show the clear connection between these phenomena and wave breaking. Still there are several unresolved questions such as whether or not the jumping cirrus eventually evolves into plumes and whether the pancake clouds really exist.

In this paper, we will show new aircraft and satellite observational evidence that confirm the above questions. These evidence demonstrate that the jumping cirrus can indeed evolve into plumes as observed by satellite storm images and that new rapid scan satellite storm images reveal the existence of the pancake clouds. New high resolution model simulations show cloud top features that match the observation very well and thus vindicating the role of gravity wave breaking in this process. Model results also give an estimate of the cross-tropopause transport of water substance that is much larger than previously thought.