American Geophysical Union General Assembly, 2010 poster

AGU 2010 Poster – Chemical tracers in the upper atmosphere

Abstract: A rare glimpse into the chemical and dynamical evolution of the Arctic polar vortex is provided by a suite of in situ balloonborne measurements. A set of mesospheric tracers observed in the late vortex validate theoretical mesospheric chemical profiles, which is especially valuable for the case of mesospheric H2 . Early vortex mesospheric profiles are constructed to explain mixing in tracer-tracer space. Expanding a model to incorporate three mesotracers, H2 , CO, and SF6 , instead of only one, will increase our ability to constrain estimates of the amount of mesospheric air that descended to stratospheric altitudes by vortex end.