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JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112, D16304, doi:10.1029/2007JD008928, 2007

A comparison of radiosonde and GPS radio occultation measurements with meteorological temperature analyses in the Antarctic vortex, 1998–2004

Gerald E. Nedoluha

Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C., USA


Jerome Alfred

Computational Physics Inc., Springfield, Virginia, USA


Craig M. Benson

Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C., USA


Karl W. Hoppel

Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C., USA


Jens Wickert

GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam, Germany


Gert Koenig-Langlo

Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany


Abstract

We present comparisons between temperature measurements from sondes launched from South Pole Station and Neumayer Station with four meteorological analyses for the years 1998–2004. We also compare these meteorological analyses with inside-the-vortex GPS radio occultation measurements from the Challenging Minisatellite Payload (CHAMP) instrument for 2001–2004. We use these comparisons to evaluate the interannual consistency of four meteorological analyses. We find that over the 1998–2004 period each of the four analyses showed at least one year-to-year jump in the average 1 June to 30 September bias of >2.3 K when compared to the Neumayer and South Pole sondes at 30 hPa and 50 hPa. We find that while for the one nonoperational analysis (the NCEP Reanalysis) the biases relative to sondes and GPS radio occultation measurements are often larger than for the operational analyses, the NCEP Reanalysis does show the best interannual consistency at 50 hPa. Having compared the meteorological analyses with measurements and with each other, we investigate whether the unusually high ozone at the top of the ozone hole (∼30 hPa) in 2003 can be understood in terms of unusually warm temperatures which would reduce the rate of chlorine activation and hence ozone destruction. We find that when bias corrections based on analysis-sonde comparisons are applied none of the meteorological analyses studied indicate that the winter of 2003 was warmer at 30 hPa than that of 1998 and 2000, years which did not show unusually high ozone at 30 hPa.

Received 7 May 2007; accepted 30 May 2007; published 21 August 2007.

Keywords: stratospheric temperatures; Antarctic radiosondes; GPS radio occultation.

Index Terms: 0340 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Middle atmosphere: composition and chemistry; 3349 Atmospheric Processes: Polar meteorology; 3334 Atmospheric Processes: Middle atmosphere dynamics (0341, 0342).

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Citation: Nedoluha, G. E., J. Alfred, C. M. Benson, K. W. Hoppel, J. Wickert, and G. Koenig-Langlo (2007), A comparison of radiosonde and GPS radio occultation measurements with meteorological temperature analyses in the Antarctic vortex, 1998–2004, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D16304, doi:10.1029/2007JD008928.