Providing the Upper-Air Data Relevant to Studies of the Northern Polar Climate Changes

Alexander Sterin, RIHMI-WDC, Russia


The International Polar Year (IPY) research activity presumes wide study of all components of the climate system. Among the topics of this study, the Upper-Air (U/A) climate status and changes are a significant part.

In more details, the study of the Northern Polar Zone (NPZ) U/A Climate is to concentrate on monitoring and data collection issues. There are several difficulties in successful decision of these data and information problems, which are discussed in this paper.

Due to high variability of U/A parameters in theNPZ, there are essential difficulties in estimating long period trends for the tropospheric and lower stratospheric temperature and for the other parameters. This is one of the main sources of uncertainty in our knowledge of U/A climate in the Northern Polar Zone. The other source of uncertainty is in lack of observational data, especially for the Northern polar zone lying in Russian sector of Arctic. This lack of data is the reason to apply special methods of analysis of those data that are available. In this situation, the value of observations is growing essentially.

The following problems related to data for the U/A climate studies in theNPZ, are mentioned in the paper:
-obtaining long period U/A observations from various possible sources,
- inhomogeneity detection (approaches and methods specific for the Northern Polar Zone),
- assessment of data availability from the known radiosonde datasets
- radiosonde data vs satellite data for the NPZ
- the main tendencies in U/A climate change for the NPZ

Lot of information considering the U/A temperature changes and variability in the NPZ, are included in the paper


Keywords: IPY, Data, Climate, Free Atmosphere, Analysis