First results of the refurbished SOUSY radar: Tropopause altitude climatology at 78°N, 16°E, 2008

Abstract

The second generation SOUSY MST radar at 78°N, 16°E on Svalbard has recently completed its inaugural year of combined troposphere and mesosphere observations. Here, troposphere observations have been processed using a robust detection algorithm designed for obtaining tropopause climatology by automatic data processing, and the resulting monthly statistics have been compared with corresponding surface air temperatures. As our main objective, we describe the new radar system, present the tropopause detection method, and validate the results using radiosonde and surface temperature data. The tropopause height depends on the temperature of the underlying atmosphere but is also influenced by downward control from the stratosphere. We find that the climatological tropopause height is correlated with the surface temperature but with the former lagging the latter by approximately 1 month.