The Impact of Convective Storms on Global Atmospheric Transport Processes

In addition to their tremendous power display and serious damages they often cause, convective storms also play important roles in the global atmospheric transport processes. In this presentation, I would like to discuss two aspects of these processes: (1) the cross-tropopause transport of matter and (2) the transport of momentum and energy to the upper atmosphere. The cross-tropopause transport of matter is manifested by the phenomenon of the above-anvil cirrus plumes (AACP) discovered more than two decades ago by Martin Setvak and others via satellite data. I will review both satellite observations and theoretical modeling of this and related storm top phenomena. The transport of momentum and energy to the upper atmosphere by convective storms is manifested by the presence of concentric airglow patterns at the mesopause whose centers are collocated with storm activities in the troposphere. The wave-like airglow patterns have been observed by Suomi/NPP VIIRs imageries and we have performed numerical simulations to show that they form such patterns due to the propagation of storm-generated gravity waves from the lower atmosphere to the mesopause level.