Suginori IWASAKI
National Defense Academy

A well-developed cumulonimbus that reaches the tropopause cannot bring substances (water vapor) into the stratosphere because it cannot go up higher over the tropopause. However, a cloud named “jumping cirrus” is reported, which protrudes 1-2 km above anvil cloud of a cumulonimbus. It is possible that jumping cirrus can reach the stratosphere and bring water vapor there.

In this research, we tried to take pictures of jumping cirrus by 6 cameras installed at the top of Mt. Fuji. Observations at the top of the mountain is less interrupted by clouds of lower altitude than ones at the ground. As a result, we found several phenomena like jumping cirrus from some images taken during July and August while we are still checking the rest of images. In the future, we will analyze the characteristic of jumping cirrus in a quantitative way, using data from satellites such as Himawari 8. Furthermore, we try to demonstrate whether or not the jumping cirrus reaches the stratosphere and bring moisture to the stratosphere, which can contribute to the accurate estimation of the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere and the understanding of global water vapor circulation.