Estudio y caracterización de la tropopausa: térmica, dinámica y química

Abstract

In the last years there has been an increased interest in the study of the tropopause, motivated by the recognition of its important role in a large number of phenomena related to climate and atmospheric chemistry. The tropopause involves a limit to the tropospheric convection and influences the development of weather systems, while intervening in the exchange of different substances, such as ozone or various pollutants. However, there are different definitions of the tropopause, thus making difficult the comparison of results. This PhD. Thesis provides a comparative study of three commonly used definitions of tropopause, which summarize the thermal, dynamic and chemical behavior of this layer, using radiosondes and reanalysis data at global scale for the 1979-2001 period. This study involves an advance with respect to previous works, which have often been restricted to one definition alone. Moreover, the characterization of the tropopause in some definitions, such as the chemical one, is restricted to small regions and short periods, due to the requirement of satellite-based observations or specific observational campaigns for its diagnostic. In this PhD. Thesis, an objective method has been developed, which allows identifying the mixed layer and chemical tropopause from reanalysis data.