Signs of climate variability in double tropopause global distribution from radio occultation data

Abstract

Abstract. In a standard atmosphere, there is a single lapse rate tropopause (in what follows, tropopause) that separates the troposphere below from the stratosphere above. However, in certain situations, such as in regions of strong vertical wind shear or associated with certain weather phenomena, a second tropopause layer may form above the standard tropopause. The presence of a double tropopause (DT) can have implications for atmospheric and climate studies, as it may be associated with dynamic and complex weather patterns. Based on 14 years of temperature profiles retrieved by GNSS radio occultation and the resulting DT, a possible relationship between the spatio-temporal distribution of the relative number of DT to simple tropopauses (NDT) (or dependent variable) and a set of monthly climate indices (or features) is explored with a focus on the methodological approach. A cluster analysis is applied to geographically associate the DT occurrences with the climate indices. Then a multivariate linear regression is constructed using a progression of different models to identify the relevant features for the occurrence of DTs. On a global scale, from a hierarchical cluster analysis six sub-regions with different location and spread characteristics are identified. In addition to the condition of linearity in the residuals, the performance of each model in the train and test populations is evaluated to discard possible overfitting. The required conditions of non-collinearity, stationarity and cross-correlation between the features and the relative number of NDT after the removal of the climatological mean for each month (NDT’) are checked. Mean squared errors, adjusted coefficient of determination (adjusted R²) and number of degrees of freedom (F-statistic) parameters are evaluated for each model obtained. Taking into account the constraints of the present analysis, the most relevant climatic indices for the distribution of NDT' are identified.