Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics www.atmos-chem-phys.net 1680-7316 1680-7324 6 9 2006 10.5194/acp-6-2651-2006 http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/6/2651/2006/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/6/2651/2006/acp-6-2651-2006.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/6/2651/2006/acp-6-2651-2006.pdf 2651 2670 2006-07-05 Stratosphere-troposphere exchange from the Lagrangian perspective: a case study and method sensitivities M. S. Bourqui michel.bourqui@mcgill.ca McGill University, Montreal, Canada An important part of extra-tropical stratosphere-to-troposphere transport occurs in association with baroclinic wave breaking and cut-off decay at the tropopause. In the last decade many studies have attempted to estimate stratosphere-troposphere exchange (STE) in such synoptic events with various methods, and more recently efforts have been made to inter-compare these methods. These inter-comparisons show large variations between estimates from different methods. This large uncertainty points to a need to thoroughly evaluate such methods, assess the realism of the resulting STE estimates and determine the sensitivities to intrinsic parameters of the methods. The present study focuses on a trajectory-based Lagrangian method which has been applied in the past to climatological studies. This method is applied here to the quantification of STE in the context of a typical baroclinic wave breaking event. 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