A novel method for detecting tropopause structures based on the bi-Gaussian function

作者：Kun Zhang, Tao Luo, Xuebin Li, Shengcheng Cui, Ningquan Weng, Yinbo Huang, Yingjian Wang · 发表于：Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.5194/acp-24-11157-2024 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Atmospheric Ozone and Climate、Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics、Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics

Abstract. The tropopause is an important transition layer and can be a diagnostic of upper-tropospheric and lower-stratospheric structures, exhibiting unique atmospheric thermal and dynamic characteristics. A comprehensive understanding of the evolution of fine tropopause structures is necessary and primary for the further study of complex multi-scale atmospheric physical–chemical coupling processes in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. A novel method utilizing the bi-Gaussian function is capable of identifying the characteristic parameters of vertical tropopause structures and providing information on double-tropopause (DT) structures. The new method improves the definition of the cold-point tropopause and detects one (or two) of the most significant local cold points by fitting the temperature profiles to the bi-Gaussian function, which defines the point(s) as the tropopause height(s). The bi-Gaussian function exhibits excellent potential for explicating the variation trends of temperature profiles. The results of the bi-Gaussian method and lapse rate tropopause, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization, are compared in detail for different cases. Results indicate that the bi-Gaussian method is able to more stably and obviously identify the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of the thermal tropopauses, even in the presence of multiple temperature inversion layers at higher elevations. Moreover, 5 years of historical radiosonde data from ...