MLS Weekly Tropospheric Data Plots

These are global maps of weekly-average MLS measurements of upper tropospheric cloud ice, relative humidity with respect to ice, water vapor, CO, O3 and temperature. Included for comparison are maps for the same period of GMAO GEOS-5 first look output for water vapor. This 20-year map record was generated with MLS v4 and v5 data at 100, 147, 215, and 316 hPa pressure surfaces. White contours show potential vorticity value (3.5x106 Km2kg-1s-1) indicative of the dynamical tropopause. Black contours on the cloud ice maps show GEOS-5 outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) value of 240 W/m2. Black contours on the other maps show MLS cloud ice values indicative of deep convection (0.3 mg/m3 at 100 hPa, 1 mg/m3 at 147 hPa, and 3 mg/m3 at 215 hPa). The MLS data have been screened to exclude situations where clouds impact the results.  Maps were only generated for a week when there were at least 5 contiguous days of good data during the week.