This page is an abstract of the article, E. P. Salathe and D. L. Hartmann, 1999: Subsidence and Upper-Tropospheric Drying along Trajectoriesin a General Circulation Model. accepted for publication in J. Climate.
© Copyright American Meteorological Society

The full text can be viewed in html or download PDF for printing using Acrobat.

Abstract

[enlarge]

A trajectory analysis of the CCM3 moisture simulation is used to show that the model simulates upper-tropospheric moisture observations better than would be inferred from a traditional geographical comparison. The upper-tropospheric moisture simulation is compared to upper-tropospheric moisture derived from GOES 6.7-micron observations for September 1992. Trajectories start in convective regions of the tropics and are followed into non-convective subsidence regions. Moisture and pressure along the trajectories are determined for both the model and observations. Humidity values as a function of subsidence agree much better between observations and model than do geographical grid box comparisons, because the model does not simulate details in the large-scale flow pattern precisely. The relative humidity decreases slightly more slowly with subsidence along trajectories in the CCM3 simulation than in observations.

Return to Eric Salathé,'s WWW Page