Abstract
Water vapor in the stratosphere is primarily controlled by temperatures
in the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. However, the
direct impact of deep convection on the global lower stratospheric water
vapor budget is still an actively debated issue. Two complementary
modeling approaches are used to investigate the convective impact in
boreal winter and summer. Backward trajectory model simulations coupled
with a detailed treatment of cloud microphysical processes indicate that
convection moistens the global lower stratosphere by approximately 0.3
ppmv (~10% increase) in boreal winter and summer 2010.
The diurnal peak in convection is responsible for about half of the
total convective moistening during boreal winter and nearly all of the
convective moistening during boreal summer. Deep convective cloud tops
overshooting the local tropopause have relatively minor effect on global
lower stratospheric water vapor (~1% increase). A
forward trajectory model coupled with a simplified cloud module is used
to esimate the relative magnitude of the interannual variability of the
convective impact during 2006-2016. Combing the results from the two
models, we find that the convective impact on the global lower
stratospheric water vapor during 2006-2016 is approximately 0.3 ppmv
with year-to-year variations of up to 0.1 ppmv. The dominant mechanism
of convective hydration of the lower stratosphere is via the detrainment
of saturated air and ice into the tropical uppermost troposphere.
Convection shifts the relative humidity distribution of subsaturated air
parcels in the upper troposphere toward higher relative humidity values,
thereby increasing the water vapor in the stratosphere.