A Climatology of Rossby Wave Breaking along the Subtropical Tropopause

Abstract

Ten years of global analyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts are used to investigate the temporal and spatial distributions of Rossby wave breaking (RWB) at 350 K along the tropopause, herein defined by the 1.5 potential vorticity (PV) unit (10 6 K m 2 s 1 kg 1 ) contours. Though many studies acknowledge RWB as an important contributor to the complex of mixing processes in the atmosphere, there exists no prior climatological study of its distribution near the tropopause.