Determination of tropical belt widening using multiple GNSS radio occultation measurements

Abstract

In the last decades, several studies reported the tropics' expansion, but the rates of expansion are widely different. In this paper, data of 12 global navigation satellite systems radio occultation (GNSS-RO) missions from June 2001 to November 2020 with high resolution were used to investigate the possible widening of the tropical belt along with the probable drivers and impacts in both hemispheres. Applying both lapse rate tropopause (LRT) and cold point tropopause (CPT) definitions, the global tropopause height shows an increase of approximately 36 and 60 m per decade, respectively. The tropical edge latitudes (TELs) are estimated based on two tropopause height metrics, subjective and objective methods. Applying both metrics, the determined TELs using GNSS have expansive behavior in the Northern Hemisphere (NH), while in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) there are no significant trends. In the case of ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) there are no considerable trends in both hemispheres. For the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), there is expansion in the NH and observed contraction in the SH. The variability of tropopause parameters (temperature and height) is maximum around the TEL locations in both hemispheres. Moreover, the spatial and temporal patterns of total column ozone (TCO) have good agreement with the TEL positions estimated using GNSS LRT height. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄), the most important greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the main drivers of global warming, have spatial modes in the NH that are located more poleward than that in the SH. Both surface temperature and precipitation have strong correlation with GNSS LRT height. The surface temperature spatial pattern broadly agrees with the GNSS TEL positions. In contrast, the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) has no direct connection with the TEL behavior. The results illustrate that the tropics' widening rates are different from one dataset to another and from one metric to another. In addition, TEL behavior in the NH is different from that in the SH. Furthermore, the variability of meteorological parameters agrees with GNSS TEL results more than with that of other datasets.