STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF LAND SURFACE PROCESSES AND ROLE OF CONVECTION IN THE VARIATION OF TROPOPAUSE HEIGHT ABOVE RANCHI REGION

Abstract

 In this paper it has been tried to study the statistical aspect of the influence of land surface processes 
over convection in the atmosphere and what is the role of convection in the variation of tropopause. The area 
under study is Ranchi (2342’N, 85 33’E), located in the eastern part of India. We used three types of source of 
data which are (i) data obtained through LATAMOS, (ii) AWS data and (iii) radiosonde data. Slow as well as 
fast response logarithmic wind profile data were collected from our existing set-up from 2008-2011, whereas 
radiosonde data of monsoon and pre-monsoon seasons have been used for the present study. Land surface 
processes include the complex interactions (including biophysical, hydrological and bio-geochemical 
interactions) between the land and the atmosphere at micro and meso-scales. Land surface conditions 
(including terrain, soil, land-use, soil moisture, albedo) affect the partition of surface radiation flux into latent 
and sensible heat flux, which in turn affects the deep convection initiation and development. We have selected 
net solar radiation, surface heat flux, temperature, humidity, pressure, wind velocity and wind direction as our 
parameters and established interrelationship among land surface processes, convection and variation of 
tropopause height by using statisitical correlation. MATLAB and Excel have been used for calculation and 
graph plotting.