Data · dataset · 2026
Tropical temperature variability in the UTLS: New insights from GPS radio occultation observations
Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research
Global positioning system (GPS) radio occultation (RO) observations, first made of Earth's atmosphere in 1995, have contributed in new ways to the understanding of the thermal structure and variability of the tropical upper troposphereâlower stratosphere (UTLS), an important component of the climate system.
Description
The UTLS plays an essential role in the global radiative balance, the exchange of water vapor, ozone, and other chemical constituents between the troposphere and stratosphere, and the transfer of energy from the troposphere to the stratosphere.
With their high accuracy, precision, vertical resolution, and global coverage, RO observations are uniquely suited for studying the UTLS and a broad range of equatorial waves, including gravity waves, Kelvin waves, Rossby and mixed Rossbyâgravity waves, and thermal tides. Because RO measurements are nearly unaffected by clouds, they also resolve the upper-level thermal structure of deep convection and tropical cyclones as well as volcanic clouds.
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Their low biases and stability from mission to mission make RO observations powerful tools for studying climate variability and trends, including the annual cycle and intraseasonal-to-interannual atmospheric modes of variability such as the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO), MaddenâJulian oscillation (MJO), and El NiñoâSouthern Oscillation (ENSO). These properties also make them useful for evaluating climate models and detection of small trends in the UTLS temperature, key indicators of climate change.
This paper reviews the contributions of RO observations to the understanding of the three-dimensional structure of tropical UTLS phenomena and their variability over time scales ranging from hours to decades and longer.
Links
Get the data
- Publisher page n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7ws8xkz ↗
documentation · download · from data ucar edu
Where it is published
- data.ucar.edu /dataset/tropical-temperature-variability-in-the-utls-new-insig… ↗
National Center for Atmospheric Research dataset page
landing page · from data ucar edu
Catalogue records · 1
- CKAN API data.ucar.edu/api/3/action/package_show?id=cdf1450e-10a8-4954-9860-3faba3988… ↗
metadata API · from data ucar edu
Topics
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Tropospheric and stratospheric physics 76%
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Center for Atmospheric Research | cdf1450e-10a8-4954-9860-3faba3988d61 | 11 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:field:370109 | enrichment · data ucar edu | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (76%) |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| created_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /notes |
| publication_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /title |
| updated_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 |