Interpretations of the EOLE Experiment I. Temporal Variation of Eulerian Quantities

Abstract The recent EOLE constant density balloon experiment, conducted between August 1971 and July 1972 in the upper troposphere of the Southern Hemisphere, produced large quantities of highly accurate Lagrangian data. The question of the inference of Eulerian mean quantities from Lagrangian information is considered, and, in the absence of an exact and general transformation between the two data forms, an approximate method is developed. It is shown that unless sufficient care is taken in this transformation, large errors can occur in the inferred Eulerian estimates by the introduction of a Lagrangian temporal bias into the means. It is suggested that earlier GHOST estimates of the momentum flux by Solot and Angell were abnormally small by a factor of 4 for this reason. After the elimination of the Lagrangian bias and character, the “Eulerian” data are used to study the temporal variation of various measured and derived quantities which is used to infer the dynamic structure of the hemisphere during th...