The General Circulation - Geostrophic balance - Meridional structure of the atmosphere - The Hadley Cell - Midlatitudinal features - Temperature zonal wind relationship
The graphics shown at about 38 minutes showed sensible heat flux and the video relates this to extratropical cyclones. But it looked like the largest sensible heat fluxes were in the stratosphere rather than troposphere on those graphics: presumably this is not due to extratropical cyclones?
Correct. The strong sensible heat flux in the statosphere is associated with stirring by large-scale waves in a region known as the stratospheric surf zone. This occurs because of a strong horizontal temperature gradient from radiative forcing differences between the interior of the polar vortex and the midlatitudes, and correspondingly strong, unimpeded winds: www.researchgate.net/figure/A-schematic-representation-of-the-stratospheric-circulation-in-the-summer-and-winter_fig2_27335947
@@introductiontoatmosphericd284 Thank you for the detailed reply and link: that sounds interesting in it's own right but also because I know next to nothing of stratospheric dynamics and was hoping to fill that gap in my knowledge at some point anyway!
