The «surf zone» in the stratosphere

Abstract Synoptic, coarse-grain, isentropic maps of Ertel's potential vorticity Q for the northern middle stratosphere, estimated using a large-Richardson-number approximation, are presented for a number of days in January–February 1979, together with some related isentropic trajectory calculations The effects of substituting FGGE for NMC base data are noted, as well as some slight corrections to maps published earlier. The combined evidence from the observations and from dynamical models strongly indicates the existence of planetary-wave breaking, a process in which material contours are rapidly and irreversibly deformed. In the winter stratosphere this occurs most spectacularly in a gigantic ‘nonlinear critical layer’, or ‘surf zone’, which surrounds the main polar vortex, and which tends to erode the vortex when wave amplitudes become large. Some of the FGGE-based Q maps suggest that we may be seeing glimpses of local dynamical instabilities and vortex-rollup phenomena within breaking planetary waves. Related phenomena in the troposphere are discussed. An objective definition of the area A(t) of the main vortex, as it appears on isentropic Q maps, is proposed. A smoothed time series of daily values of A(t) should be a statistically powerful ‘circulation index’ for the state of the winter-time middle stratosphere, which avoids the loss of information incurred by Eulerian space and time averaging.