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Tropical dehydration processes constrained by the seasonality of stratospheric deuterated water

Nature Geoscience volume 3, pages 262–266 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Stratospheric water vapour affects Earth’s radiation budget. In addition, it has a key role in stratospheric chemistry and in processes that permit ozone depletion. Air largely enters the stratosphere in the tropics, but the processes that bring water through the cold tropopause into the stratosphere are not well understood. Here we present a 19-month record of non-deuterated (H2O) and deuterated (HDO) water in the tropical stratosphere, collected through remote-sensing measurements with the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding. Our data show a clear seasonal cycle in the isotopic composition that propagates upward in the tropical stratosphere, and is most likely created in the tropical tropopause layer. In addition, we find that the slope of the HDO–H2O correlation of water entering the stratosphere in the tropics is close to, but slightly steeper than the slope expected from Rayleigh fractionation. We propose that gradual dehydration of air by cirrus clouds that are formed in situ, together with a seasonally varying contribution from the evaporation of convectively lofted ice, provides the most plausible explanation for our measurements. We conclude that potential changes in the water budget of the tropical tropopause layer and the stratosphere should be detectable in isotopic measurements.

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Figure 1: Schematic depicting sources of tropical stratospheric water vapour.
Figure 2: The water and HDO tape recorder.
Figure 3: MIPAS measurements of [HDO] and [H2O] in the tropical stratosphere (15∘ S–15∘ N).

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Dutch Science foundation NWO (grant number ALW-GO-AO/07-01).

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Author notes

  1. Stephan Fueglistaler

    Present address: Present address: Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jörg Steinwagner, Peter-Paul Borsboom, Aarnout van Delden & Thomas Röckmann

  2. Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0WA, UK

    Stephan Fueglistaler

  3. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany

    Gabriele Stiller, Thomas von Clarmann & Michael Kiefer

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  1. Jörg Steinwagner
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Contributions

Project planning: T.R., J.S., retrieval: J.S., G.S., T.v.C., M.K., data analysis: J.S., S.F., P.-P.B., interpretation: T.R., S.F., J.S., G.S., T.v.C., A.v.D., manuscript: T.R., S.F., J.S.

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Correspondence to Stephan Fueglistaler or Thomas Röckmann.

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Steinwagner, J., Fueglistaler, S., Stiller, G. et al. Tropical dehydration processes constrained by the seasonality of stratospheric deuterated water. Nature Geosci 3, 262–266 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo822

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