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Tuesday, February 6, 2018. 10:30AM. Uncertainty of midlatitudes-to-Arctic transport. Huang Yang, Johns Hopkins. Sponsored by Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. More information here.

Transport from midlatitudes to Arctic is critical in determining the abundance and spatial distribution for a suite of anthropogenic trace species that may have substantial impacts on the Arctic and global climate. For both real tracer CO and idealized tracers (simplified chemistry, focus on transport) that have the primary emissions in the NH midlatitudes, we found a ~20% multi-model spread of their Arctic concentrations in boreal winter and ~30% in summer among models participating the Chemistry-Climate Model Initiative (CCMI) phase 1. The uncertainty of trace species concentration in Arctic due to midelaitutde-to-Arctic transport is well correlated with the multi-model spread of midlatitude convection in winter but relates more to the spread in jet location during summer. Generally, simulations with more southern midlatitude jets are accompanied by stronger midlaitude-to-Arcitic transport. It is further suggested that this correlation is more due to the meridional mean transport varying with the width of Hadley Cell and simultaneously varying with the jet location instead of the eddy transport induced by the jet-associated Rossby Wave breaking.