TY  - JOUR
AU  - Müller, R.
AU  - Günther, G.
TI  - A Generalized Form of Lait's Modified Potential Vorticity
JO  - Journal of the atmospheric sciences
VL  - 60
SN  - 0022-4928
CY  - Boston, Mass.
PB  - American Meteorological Soc.
M1  - PreJuSER-31451
SP  - 2229 - 2237
PY  - 2003
N1  - Record converted from VDB: 12.11.2012
AB  - Ertel's potential vorticity P is in widespread use as a diagnostic of dynamical processes in the stratosphere. For a variety of applications, however, the exponential increase of P with altitude is problematic. For this reason, Lait proposed a modified potential vorticity Pi(L) where a physically meaningful scaling is introduced that removes much of the altitude dependence of P. Here a generalized form of Pi(L) is proposed by introducing an additional degree of freedom in the scaling. This generalized modified potential vorticity Pi(g) possesses the same conservation properties as Pi(L) itself and as the classic potential vorticity P but can be adjusted more closely to the specific situation under investigation. Comparison, over a large altitude range in the stratosphere, of fields of Pi(g) with dynamical measures of the polar vortex edge and with observations of the long-lived trace gas N2O shows that Pi(g) constitutes a more intuitively interpretable quantity than Pi(L).
KW  - J (WoSType)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000184841500013
DO  - DOI:10.1175/1520-0469(2003)060<2229:AGFOLM>2.0.CO;2
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/31451
ER  -