GESTAR II Seminar Series, Thurs February 13th, 1:00pm

Join us for a virtual seminar by Dr. Gloria Manney, Senior Research Scientist, NorthWest Research Associates (NWRA). Her talk is titled "Linking a Polar Vortex Centered View of Stratospheric Circulation to Upper Tropospheric Circulation and Composition."

Date and Time: Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 1:00pm EST

Join us via Teams.

"While impacts of broad measures of stratospheric polar vortex strength on climate and extreme weather events have been widely studied, less attention has been given to the impacts of stratospheric polar vortex variations on upper troposphere / lower stratosphere (UTLS) circulation and composition and how the UTLS contributes to that stratospheric influence on the surface. This talk uses diagnostics of stratospheric polar vortex geometry / strength, regionally and seasonally varying characterization of tropopauses and UTLS jets, and tropospheric “weather regimes” to show links between stratospheric polar vortex variability and regional variations in UTLS circulation, including jet and tropopause characteristics. Results will show UTLS jet and tropopause characteristics for strong and weak stratospheric vortex states (defined using vortex-focused metrics that are less dependent on geometry and position than commonly used diagnostics) and regional variations in correlations between polar vortex and jet diagnostics, as well as jet and tropopause variations in different weather regimes. Preliminary work will be shown assessing impacts of these vortex and UTLS circulation relationships on regional UTLS ozone and water vapor variations diagnosed from composition reanalysis and satellite datasets."

From Dr. Manney: "I got my PhD in Physics in 1988 at Iowa State University studying "Barotropic Stability of Stratospheric States". I went to JPL soon after that, moving to NorthWest Research Associates in 2012; I’ve been an adjunct Professor of Physics at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMT) since 2005. Since the Upper Atmosphere Research satellite launch in late 1991 I've spent much of my career working as part of the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) Science team, primarily focusing on stratospheric dynamics and composition, with an increased focus on upper troposphere / lower stratosphere dynamics and composition in the past 10-15 years. Since 2015, I have been a co-lead of the SPARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project (now the APARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project). I am a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and of the Royal Meteorological Society, and have over 250 peer-reviewed publications, 62 as lead author."

For more information on the GESTAR II Seminar Series, click here.