Changes in tropopause height for the Eurasian region determined from CARDS radiosonde data.

Previous studies have identified the tropopause height (TH) as a promising fingerprint of climatic change. In the present paper, we report variations in TH for the Eurasian region over the period 1973-1998 and analyse the influence of the Northern Annular Mode (NAM) on these variations. As previous studies indicate that the greatest increases in TH occur in the extratropics, we focused our attention on this area. We applied a set of homogenization procedures to radiosonde data and considered three different scenarios that take into account change points and the main volcanic eruptions over the study period. Our results demonstrate that the number of stations with positive TH trends is very sensitive to the quality of data and the methods used to remove inhomogeneities. Consequently, when change points were included in the analysis, the number of stations with positive trends decreased markedly. Furthermore, stratospheric NAM appears to control TH in stations located at latitudes higher than 55 degrees N.