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| Journal Article | PreJuSER-31451 |
;
2003
American Meteorological Soc.
Boston, Mass.
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Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/20692 doi:10.1175/1520-0469(2003)060<2229:AGFOLM>2.0.CO;2
Abstract: 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).
Keyword(s): J
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