Mesoscale Temperature Fluctuations Induced by a Spectrum of Gravity Waves: A Comparison of Parameterizations and Their Impact on Stratospheric Microphysics

Power spectral densities (PSDs) of mesoscale fluctuations of temperature and rate of change of temperature (heating–cooling rate) due to a spectrum of stratospheric gravity waves are derived using canonical spectral forms based on observations and linear gravity wave theory. The parameterization developed here assumes a continuous distribution of horizontal wave phase speeds, as opposed to a previous spectral parameterization in which all waves were assigned stationary ground-based phase speeds. Significantly different heating–cooling rate PSDs result in each case. The differences are largest at small horizontal scales, where the continuous phase-speed parameterization yields heating–cooling rate PSDs that are several orders of magnitude smaller than in the stationary phase-speed parameterization. A simple Monte Carlo method is used to synthesize randomly phased temperature perturbation time series within tagged air parcels using either spectral parameterization. These time series are incorporated into a nonequilibrium, microphysical trajectory-box model to assess the microphysical consequences of each parameterization. Collated results yield a “natural” geophysical scatter of instantaneous aerosol volumes within air parcels away from equilibrium conditions. The amount of scatter was much smaller when the continuous phase-speed parameterization was used.