Graduate Student Postdoc Seminar (GSPD) – Stephen Bourguet

Thursday, September 15, 2022

12:00 – 1:00pm

Hoffman Faculty Lounge

Talk Title: Lagrangian trajectories are frequently used to trace air parcels from the troposphere to the stratosphere through the tropical tropopause layer (TTL), and the coldest temperatures of these trajectories have been used to reconstruct water vapor variability in the lower stratosphere. The radiative forcing of water vapor is strongest near the tropopause; as such, the ability of these trajectories to accurately capture temperatures encountered by parcels in the TTL is crucial to water vapor reconstructions and calculations of water vapor’s radiative forcing. A potential source of error for trajectory calculations is the resolution of the input data. Here, I present results from a recent paper where I vary the spatial and temporal resolution of model input data and evaluate the impact on the temperatures measured by Lagrangian trajectories that cross the TTL during boreal winter using ERA5 reanalysis data.