Climatological perspectives of air transport from atmospheric boundary layer to tropopause layer over Asian monsoon regions during boreal summer inferred from Lagrangian approach

The Asian Summer Monsoon (ASM) region has been recognized as a key region that plays a vital role in troposphere-to-stratosphere transport (TST), which can significantly impact the budget of global atmospheric constituents and climate change. However, the details of transport from the boundary layer (BL) to tropopause layer (TL) over this region, particularly from a climatological perspective, remains an issue of uncertainty. In this study, we present the climatological properties of BL-to-TL transport over the ASM region during boreal summer season (June-July-August) from 2001 to 2009. A comprehensive tracking analysis is conducted based on a large ensemble of TST-trajectories departing from the atmospheric BL and arriving at TL. Driven by the winds fields from the NCEP/NCAR (National Centers for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research) Global Forecast System, all TST-trajectories are selected from the high resolution datasets generated by the Lagrangian particle transport model FLEXPART using a domain-filling technique. Three key atmospheric boundary layer sources for BL-to-TL transport are identified with their contributions: (i) 38% from the region between tropical Western Pacific region and South China Seas (WP), (ii) 21% from Bay of Bengal and South Asian subcontinent (BOB), and (iii) 12% from the Tibetan Plateau, which includes the South Slope of the Himalayas (TIB). Controlled by the different patterns of atmospheric circulation, the air masses originating from these three source regions are transported along the different tracks into the TL. The spatial distributions of these three source regions remain similarly from year to year. The timescales of transport from BL to TL by the large-scale ascents range from 1 to 7 weeks, contributing up to 60–70% of the overall TST; whereas the transport governed by the deep convection overshooting becomes faster, with timescales of 1–2 days and contributions of 20–30%. These results provide clear policy implications for the control of very short lived substances, especially for the source regions over the Indian subcontinent with increasing populations and developing industries.