Air France A330-200 missing

[Evening Star]

Originally Posted by wilyflier

thpaulsen,
Doesnt a really big CB punch up through the tropopause? Tops above cruising height anyway

Yes, a big CB can. Amongst others, Liu and Zipser (Liu, C., and E. J. Zipser (2005), Global distribution of convection penetrating the tropical tropopause, J. Geophys. Res.,
110, D23104, doi:10.1029/2005JD006063.) indicate that this is more common over land, although with a reasonable distribution over the oceans along the equator. Furthermore, the oceanic tropopause penetration is more likely to be nocturnal.